


One Time Gimli Saved Legolas and Five Times Legolas Saved Him

by Roselightfairy, TAFKAB (orphan_account)



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Bigotry & Prejudice, Buff Legolas, Bugs & Insects, Canon-Typical Violence, Damsels in Distress, Fluff, Gimli is a good, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Legolas is a BAMF, M/M, Mental Coercion, Off-screen torture, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sensual Hair Imagery, fire ants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: No matter what the situation, the dwarf and the elf learn that they can rely on one another, throughout the War of the Ring and beyond.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katajainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/gifts).



Legolas tucked himself more firmly into the crook of his chosen branch, wrapping his arms around one drawn-up leg and letting his head sink until his cheek rested upon his knee.

He knew he had been this tired before-- even in recent memory-- but he was so exhausted now that he could not even remember when. In fact, there were many things he could not remember, such as when he had last spent time in reverie, where his ability to negotiate had gone, or why he had been so eager to come here.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest: the rustling of wind and birds and small animals through the trees, the joyful burbling of a distant creek, and the voices of the Lothlórien elves calling greetings to one another, singing laments for Gandalf, or chatting happily in their Silvan dialect.

It was not _so_ different from his own, near enough to the speech he was familiar with that he had been chosen as negotiator when others would have certainly been better suited, but it was still… off. A different inflection, vowels slightly longer than the tongue of his own kin-- as though they had more time in which to speak. And perhaps they did.

Everything was off, here, as though this forest was meant to be his home-- but not. The rustling of small animals was more relaxed-- in his own forest, when he could hear the animals, he knew that the time had come to flee. And he could only hear them in the parts of the forest closer to their palace, where the other elves lived-- further out, the spiders ate nearly everything that tried to survive. 

The elves spoke just a bit more loudly than was Legolas’s custom, their voices slightly more cheerful. Everything was more cheerful-- it lacked the edge of wariness that all the elves and creatures of Mirkwood had developed, the codes and shorthands that they used to warn one another of danger or promise safety. Here, everything and everyone was used to being safe.

Oh, Legolas knew he was being uncharitable with that thought-- these elves were as prepared for war as any other, their boundaries as rigorously guarded-- that, at least, had been proven by their welcome to the Fellowship! And yet he could not help the bitterness-- for here, in a land filled with elves, was the place he felt farthest from home.

Perhaps that was why he had made so little effort to shield Gimli from Haldir’s suspicion and mistrust when the marchwarden insisted upon blindfolding him; he had wished to reinforce his own sense of belonging at the dwarf’s expense. And yet, it had come at the expense of their fellowship. He felt he had betrayed his oath to that cause, not merely the dwarf’s trust. Little enough that it was to begin with; now it was even less! 

Raised by Thranduil, Legolas had always assumed himself the social equal, if not superior, of any elf he met. Here… Galadriel’s radiance had humbled him in a way he had never thought possible, giving him a new context for regal majesty. Elrond had not rivaled Thranduil-- he had not cared to try, preferring the unassuming mien of a loremaster to the grandeur of one who ruled a great land and wished for others to know it. But Galadriel had humbled Legolas effortlessly, had made Thranduil seem as tarnished as faded silver next to the radiance of undimmed stars. Thranduil put forth constant effort to make the impression he sought; Galadriel merely… _was_. There was no attempt to make an impression about her, merely a sense of being precisely what she wished.

Put together with the sense of safety in this wood, the confidence of protection from any foe untainted by the wariness that had been Legolas’s constant companion throughout his life, it made Legolas feel as if he were less than he had always assumed, and had been welcomed on sufferance.

As he sat musing, two of the Lothlórien elves wandered close, following a path between the great trees. He made ready to leap down from his perch and greet them in politeness, listening to their speech.

“Where is Thranduilion?” one said, and Legolas froze where he was, with one hand poised on the branch he had meant to use for a counterbalance as he moved to vault downward.

“I know not.” The other tittered, and that more than his own name kept Legolas so still that he would not be seen upon his perch. “But perhaps that is the better, for we are spared the need to hear him once more butcher our language as if he were one of the sons of men.”

“Worse than that. As if he were a dark elf from the days of Elu Thingol, in keeping with his rustic name,” the first joined in the laughter. “And from his raiment, he may well have been-- unchanged since then, perhaps.”

Legolas chewed his lip viciously, shrinking back against the bough of the mallorn. It was well he had not let himself be seen. 

“It is not only the way he dresses; rather, that merely represents the lower standards that Thranduil’s people seem to have adopted,” the second elf agreed. “It is said his kin have no craft of their own, save drinking wine. They do not even make songs; they sing those made by other elves-- or men. They use the crafts of others and save their effort for warfare, battling always against the foul spiders that infest their dark realm. And war, it seems, is indeed all they are good for, judging by his...stature.” Another conspiratorial laugh accompanied these words. “He is as muscled as a wild bear, hardly an elf at all!”

“It is fitting, for one who lives in that forest could hardly be an elf! The land is little better than Mordor, by all accounts.” Now the first elf’s voice fell. “It is said Sauron made it his own abode for a time, and he poisoned the place. Yet Thranduil would not leave it.”

“He is a fool indeed. It would have been better by far for him to come and lend his strength to us here after his father fell-- to live in the light of the Lady rather than wallowing in the foul darkness of his own tainted realm.”

 _I should like to see you survive a week in our home,_ Legolas wished to shout, but could not-- he sat still and breathless on his own branch instead, his stomach and chest empty as though the air had been stolen from him. Who were they to speak thus of his father, of his home? What right did they think they had to malign elves who had spent the entirety of their lives fighting the Enemy, trying to keep his poison at bay, when they remained safe within the protection of their wood?

And yet--

And yet it was so close to what he had been thinking, just moments before. He had spent little time among other elves in his life-- he had no time for such indulgences as travel, not unless they were needed-- and he had never realized before how small they could make him feel, how… incomplete. Which was its own form of irony, and he felt blood rush into his cheeks, remembering their comments on his awkward appearance. Though he would have the approval of men, it was not usual or desirable for an elf to have his bulk in muscle. He was as light of foot as any of his cousins… but he did not look the same. He had earned respect in his father’s kingdom, but he did not fit here. 

And even if he had not had his own doubts, how could he respond after all they had said, with the knowledge that even the act of raising his voice to them in speech would only invite further ridicule?

His stomach twisted; his hand tightened around the branch he held-- and to his horror it splintered in his fist, with a loud cracking sound that no mortal would have missed, let alone any elf. And sure enough, he looked straight down into the upturned faces of the two Galadhrim who had just been speaking of him.

Now would have been the time to speak, if ever there was such a time. He ought to greet them in cool politeness, in his most perfect Sindarin, to prove that he was unaffected by their rudeness and capable of refraining from responding in kind. Or perhaps now would be the time to unleash his anger on them, to insult their cowardice for suggesting that his family should have given in so easily to Sauron’s attempts to force them out of their home. Or he should demand how much darkness _they_ had seen, that gave them the right to speak as they had of those who had spent lifetimes fighting it-- to prove that his people were as skilled as theirs, to challenge them to a contest of-- of--

Of what? Their words had already proven that they thought little or nothing of any skills he might have to compare to theirs, that whatever he said and did would only further solidify their opinions of him, and he could hardly bring himself to speak up when his own belief in their error had been so shaken. Anyway, the time for any such response had already passed, even as he stared down at them, feeling like-- like a squirrel who had tried to find food too close to a spider’s nest.

After just a long enough pause had gone by to ensure the excruciating awkwardness of the moment, one of the Galadhrim spoke. “Good evening, Thranduilion.”

Legolas stared down for another long moment. Did they expect him to merely answer? But when nothing more was said, he gathered himself enough to respond-- and found that his tongue had turned to lead, keeping him from any other response but the expected greeting. “Good evening,” he croaked, and found himself measuring each syllable as he spoke it, his own accent grating against the back of his mind.

“I hope your accommodations are to your liking,” one of the elves said smoothly. “We are aware your father’s palace is below the ground, as are the dwarf’s and halflings’ preferred dwellings, but we had none such to offer.”

“I care not where I lodge,” Legolas said. “I am bound to my fellowship and their quest.” The words sounded as awkward as the other elf was smooth, and looking on him, Legolas found it hard to accept that this was one of his Silvan kin, with the look of the people he so loved at home. 

“Ah yes. By... oath,” the other observed, managing somehow to invest the word with all the contempt he might have reserved for one of the sons of Fëanor, had one of them come to Lothlórien seeking a silmaril under the geas of a similar oath. “A noble vow.”

“An oath to thwart the will of Sauron,” Legolas said sharply, moved at last to defiance-- these elves thought themselves worthy of insulting the fellowship’s quest, when they would not even dare to face the spiders that Legolas had fought since he was hardly more than a child?

“What?” They tilted their heads and frowned as though he had spoken in a tongue they did not know.

“I vowed to fight the dark power that rises in the east,” Legolas switched to the Westron tongue-- let them speak it, if they could!

Was this how Gimli had felt when Haldir sought to blindfold him? Legolas drained that bitter cup to the dregs now. Though he held the high ground, both in fact and in courtesy, they stared at him with the same expression of ones who looked down their noses at an inferior. 

“Perhaps you would care to bathe,” the first elf suggested, ignoring Legolas’s words of Sauron, and he matched Legolas, speaking now in the tongue of the west. He had not introduced himself, a rudeness Legolas judged to be fully deliberate. The second elf smirked faintly as he said it, and Legolas flushed again. Perhaps they had scented him despite his concealment, and had spoken deliberately in the knowledge he would overhear. “We have springs and waterfalls where this may be done.”

As if Mirkwood had none. Legolas suppressed his wrath with an effort, and kept his expression flat and austere as he looked down, drawing on all the haughtiness of Thranduil. “Perhaps you would care to--”

“Legolas!” The dwarf’s bellow was a welcome diversion, and Legolas turned to see Gimli stamping down the path, scowling as he turned his head to search hither and yon-- yet not thinking to look upward. “Where have you gone, my friend?”

“I am here.” Legolas sprang down and alit at Gimli’s side, feeling for the first time a true kinship for the dwarf-- as an outsider in a hostile place that should not have been so. He turned his most forbidding glare upon the two discourteous elves. “I take my leave of you now,” he said, quite a rude farewell, and turned his back upon them with contempt. If they wished to push this battle of words to one of blows--

\--Perhaps the dwarf would fight at his side. Looking down into the belligerent face, noting the subtle position of the dwarf’s hand upon the haft of his axe, he was suddenly quite certain Gimli would. 

“I am glad of your company, Gimli,” he said. “Let us go and find our friends.” He led Gimli away, back straight, head held high, and made no effort to lower his voice. “And later I will show you this land, for it has many wonders in it, though perhaps the courtesy of its inhabitants might lead you to think otherwise.”

Gimli laughed with genuine mirth and dawning pleasure. “Aye,” he said. “I would be glad to see them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned TOMORROW for more dramatic rescues, the next one involving that pretty little trinket the halfling carries, which so dearly loves to tempt people to take it for their own...
> 
> This fic goes out to Katajainen for her particularly wonderful and faithful feedback! ♥


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gimli struggles with temptation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of the nature of Gimli's temptation by the Ring, this chapter contains very brief mentions of what could be construed as sexual coercion. It does not actually happen, nor is it very explicit, but the Ring is not a nice thing, and the thoughts it engenders are not particularly nice either.

Gimli lay in his bedroll and scowled.  

First he scowled at the campfire.

Then he scowled at Pippin’s back.

Then he scowled at the stars for a while.  

Then he rolled back toward the campfire.  Or he tried to, but before he completed the journey the elf’s boot settled on his hip, stopping him as firmly as if he had struck granite.

“Do dwarves sleep, then, as elves do-- with eyes open, alert?  Does it usually involve so much moving?” Legolas stood sentry over their rest, seeming not to need much himself-- and no, Gimli was not like him at all, for he would be very glad of sleep, if it would come.

It would not.

“I need my pipe,” he grumbled, though he had already enjoyed a smoke before he retired.  He sat up and scrambled in his pack to extract it while Legolas fed deadfall wood to the fire, bringing the flames up out of the coals once more.  Gimli packed the bowl of his pipe and took a lit branch, then inhaled to draw the flame into the bowl, puffing until he had it well alight.

As he did, he took great care not to allow his gaze to seek the small heap of blankets that was Frodo-- no, Sam-- no, both of them tangled together, lying fast asleep on the opposite side of the fire.  

He scoffed at himself and dragged his gaze down.  The hobbits were affectionate creatures, that much was certain, though Sam had been shy enough about it-- at first.

Legolas sank down on his haunches beside Gimli, following his gaze.

“You fear for Frodo,” he said so softly it was almost an imagined sound in Gimli’s ear.

Gimli made a noncommittal noise.  He did fear for Frodo, of course-- more, when he could spare the thought for it, than he feared for himself.  The burden the hobbit bore was weighty indeed, and Gimli would never shame him for seeking out comfort where he could find it.

No, he hardly had the right to do so.

He tried to find a safe place to rest his gaze, and settled on his own lap, staring determinedly at his knees even as he puffed on his pipe, hoping that the smoke might settle his thoughts.  As if there were any chance of that, with Legolas so close beside him!

“I feel it too, sometimes,” Legolas confessed, very close now, although Gimli did not dare look up to see him, his voice a breath into Gimli’s ear.  “The voice of the Ring forms a pall, like a heavy mist over the company.  It is strange, but its darkness is familiar to me-- it lingers like the taste of metal in the back of the throat.  Such a taint may be sensed, too, in the outer boundaries of my own home.”

Legolas knew, then-- somehow-- of the burden on his mind-- he must, if he would speak of it so late at night, if he would confess to his own struggle with the same.  But he could not know the reason for it, or he would not sit so close.

Gimli still looked stubbornly away, as though if he did not see the elf he would not have to confront the images in his mind, wakened first by the Lady’s words to him, and then played out endlessly in dreams born of a magic much darker.  Images of golden hair, loosened by his own hands to flow free, of smooth skin beneath his hands, of a broad, muscular body, glimpsed so often of late when Legolas bathed in streams or springs, spread now before him, bared for his touch--

He swallowed hard and said, weakly, “Ah.”  Banishing the fantasy, he crossed his legs and forced himself to gaze at his companion.  Even now he could see the lean, powerful lines of Legolas, though not the skin beneath his light leather armor, and he could picture the sharp cut of muscle and sinew at the hip so close to his elbow.  He blew out a long, slow stream of smoke. “I would not do this thing,” he said gruffly. Let it mean only the Ring, to the elf. For some things were not possible upon the face of Arda, and surely this was one.

A pause ensued-- not a long one, but enough for Gimli’s ears to discern.  Then when the elf’s voice came, it was a bit too sharp, abrupt.

“Nor I,” he said.  “Of course.”

Gimli raised a brow at him, questioning, and Legolas flushed all the way to the ears, a sudden, startling flood of color that could not be explained away by the ruddy firelight.  Legolas reached to push a bit of crumbling branch deeper into the fire, his mouth stubbornly shut.

“It is not you or I that the halfling needs to fear, I think.”  This time Gimli’s voice was barely there to be heard, and the swift pass of his gaze moved to touch upon Boromir-- an uneasy figure, his blankets tangled about him as he thrashed in restless sleep.  

Legolas stood, extending his hand to Gimli, who took it and allowed himself to be hoisted aloft.  They slipped away together, understanding that their companion’s struggle was not to be spoken of where their words might be overheard, but when they were outside of the ring of firelight, their words masked by the restless chatter of the Anduin, Legolas did not speak of the man at all.

“As long as we are a fellowship, Frodo need fear nothing.”  He reached for his bow as if to assure himself it was still there, ready to be strung.  “We will strengthen one another against its call, and against our fears. I would--” he hesitated.  “Seeing the pain of others among us, I would make a pact with you.”

“Let us hear it,” Gimli took a fortifying draw of smoke and released it in a gust through both nostrils.

“I would call you a little dragon if it would not cost me half the length of my legs,” Legolas laughed, and his laughter was fond.  “Breathing smoke in that way!"

“Your pact, elf.”  Gimli sensed him stalling, and had no mind to wait for the elf to arrive at the point.

“That should either of us falter, we will turn to the other for aid-- knowing that we may trust that the other will do whatever needs be done.”  Legolas laid a hand upon Gimli’s axe. “Even unto defending Frodo at the cost of the other’s life.”

Gimli stared down at the elf’s pale hand on the dark steel of his axe-- a weapon forged in the Ered Luin by Gimli’s own hand.  He had carried it many long miles, and it had never failed him. He tried to think of that same axe tasting the elf’s blood, and a shudder ran along the length of his spine.  He turned away and found a pile of stone where he might sit, clutching at his knees to still his hands from wandering-- either toward the elf or toward the halfling, who still lay in trusting slumber beside the fire.

And yet it seemed unlikely Legolas would fall to such a temptation; how could the Ring find something to offer him that it might move a creature of starlight and air, who needed only song and a few wisps of leaf to survive?  No, Gimli’s axe would never bathe in the blood of the Eldar, least of all this elf’s blood.

“Aye, I will swear to that pact,” he said, thinking of light sliding along the razored steel of the elf’s twin knives.  He could meet such a death with a willing heart, pierced through in flesh just as surely as he now was in spirit--

“As will I,” Legolas said, and once again he offered Gimli his hand to shake upon it, waiting with patience when Gimli did not move.  For although they were distant from the Ring, he had felt the evil mocking temptation rise up in his mind again at the thought: he could see it all in his mind, now, the knives gleaming in the light, their angle straight up from the ground, where their bearer lay.

If Legolas should need to fell him, he would have already fallen, and he could see it now: Legolas laid out bare and ready, waiting on the ground beneath him, before him; the knives winked out of the vision and then it was merely the _wanting_ , the whispering of promise: _he could be yours_.

Gimli closed his eyes and swallowed hard and did not take Legolas’s hand, fearing what he might do if he touched it-- what he might find himself suddenly able to do.

Legolas sank down beside him, and Gimli fought the temptation to shout at him to leave, to flee while he could.  But he did not, afraid to reveal his fears if he might still find the strength to fight them. Legolas said nothing, as though sensing the turmoil in Gimli’s mind even if he could not guess at his cause-- for surely the kindness would leave his face if he could!

At last, after long silence, Legolas said, “Let me call upon the pact we have just made, then.”  His eyes gleamed in the starlight, and his face was gentle-- more so than Gimli deserved, he thought miserably.  “We promised that we would give what aid was needed, and it seems to me that you are troubled in your thoughts tonight.  Will you unburden yourself to me?”

He could not, of course, and his thoughts raced frantically with the fear of being discovered, the temptation in his mind and the stronger fear of giving in to it, and the desperate urge to accept Legolas’s offer.  And amidst all that, what came out of his mouth was the truth-- the deepest truth, at the heart of all of it.

“I am afraid,” he confessed, and squeezed his eyes shut in the humiliation of the admission.

Legolas sighed, the noise almost blending in with the rushing of the Anduin’s waters.  Then his hand came to rest, very gently, over Gimli’s on his knee.

“So am I,” he said softly.  “But at least we may be afraid together.”

And it was a strange thing-- that moment of contact, instead of strengthening the voice of the Ring, seemed to dampen it, pushing it down and away until some of the chaos in Gimli’s mind quieted and calmed.  It was a moment of clarity, of _reality_ that the Ring could not offer him.

In all the images, it had given him Legolas submissive, willing, naked and spread before him for Gimli’s whims and his pleasure.  Never had it given him this: Legolas upright beside him as an equal, with kindness in his eyes, with earnest confessions and promises, the only contact between them this simple touch of hands-- a true gesture, offered in friendship.

It could not offer him this, he realized, because this was _real_.

“Yes,” he said, and he turned his hand beneath Legolas’s to clasp his fingers.  “Yes, we may.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join us again tomorrow as Legolas and Gimli find themselves in danger from even more of the Enemy's weapons-- though it's a toss-up which is the most dangerous.


	3. Chapter 3

Legolas wondered how long it might take to grow to hate the sound of trumpets.

Even the trumpets seemed to dislike their own sound; each time they rang out, it was as though they were less pleased to make the noise, for all the trumpeters stood valiantly straight as they gave breath to their instruments. In some ways, perhaps, they had the most taxing job of all-- for the captains and the soldiers had only to look grim, warriors marching forth to do a warrior’s job, while the heralds must pretend to take joy in the announcement of a ruse and a death march.

But Legolas could not concentrate on his own disquiet, not with Gimli behind him, tense as he had not been since the days they traveled with the Dead. They rode mostly in solemn silence, neither able to muster a word of cheer, but Legolas’s nerves hummed always in constant awareness of his friend at his back, gauging the exact tension in the hands clasped at his waist and the rate at which Gimli’s chest expanded and contracted against his back.

Since they first came to accept one another in Lothlórien, it had burned Legolas’s very soul to witness Gimli in pain, and he would have done what he could to ease it now, had he any words of comfort to speak. He settled for clasping Gimli’s hand in his own and holding on, taking comfort in the dwarf’s steady presence behind him and hoping, through his presence, to give his own.

The same bleak quiet hung over the rest of the company-- but no sooner had Legolas thought that than the stillness was suddenly broken by running feet up ahead-- the return of a scout.

“My lords,” he said urgently to the captains who rode in front; Legolas tilted his head to hear better from where he and Gimli rode, and he felt Gimli stir with interest behind him. “My lords, a party of foes awaits us, lying in ambush where the road cuts deep through the hills. They think to cut us off there, and surely to thin our numbers before we may reach--” He swallowed. “The gates.”

An ambush! It was a sign of how deep the mood of the company had sunk that the idea stirred up Legolas’s spirit-- a chance to remember why they were doing this, to relieve some of the tension and reduce Sauron’s numbers as they did so. He nudged Arod further up into the company, continuing to listen.

“Doubtless it is Sauron’s attempt to try our defenses,” Gandalf murmured to Aragorn. “Nonetheless, we cannot allow them to ambush us.”

“No,” Aragorn said thoughtfully. “A small party, then, of horsemen, to encircle them and cut them off before our main vanguard arrives?”

A small party of horsemen? Legolas encouraged Arod to move with purpose now, weaving through the ranks of the men who surrounded them until they were closer.

“What is it?” Gimli whispered. “What do you hear?”

“Battle to come, perhaps,” said Legolas. “Or a skirmish, at least.” Surely if there was anything that might encourage a dwarf’s blood to flow again, it was the chance to whet his blade upon some foes!

And indeed he felt Gimli shift behind him, his hand moving to where Legolas knew his axe rested. “Move us up quickly, then,” he said, “that we might take part.”

“I plan to,” murmured Legolas.

They fell in beside Aragorn, who only glanced at Legolas with a wry smile-- he knew the strength of elvish hearing; surely he had guessed that Legolas and Gimli would not be left out of such a venture. He gave them a nod before gathering with a gesture the first rank of horsemen.

“A party of foes awaits us in ambush ahead,” he said. “But if we move swiftly, they will find themselves trapped, for we have among us those who know this land. I will send this company of horsemen west, to approach them from behind and ambush their party as they would do to us.”

“There are troops among us who are familiar with these lands,” Gandalf said, nudging Shadowfax up to join them. “Faramir’s soldiers from Henneth Annun. Have them lead the horsemen, and slow our process so that we will not spring any trap before they are ready.”

Aragorn gave orders that it should be so, frowning ahead along their path.

“They will strike when we are in the cut where the road passes through the ridge,” Aragorn guessed. “We will be constrained there, and our greater numbers will not aid us against a small force.” He motioned the trumpets forward again, and they made fanfare, proclaiming his lordship while the company paused. 

“My lord, Gimli and I would join the horsemen,” Legolas said.

“No, I would have the two of you at my side when the strike comes,” Aragorn mused. “Lest our plan fail by mischance.”

“Whatever, so long as we see battle,” Gimli blustered, giving life to Legolas’s hopes that battle would raise his spirits. 

But as they rode slowly forward, he found his thoughts turning to Frodo and to Samwise, wherever they might be-- and to the gamble that even now the wizard and Aragorn ventured upon their behalf.

Legolas looked aside to the terrible silhouettes of the Ephel Duath and imagined his gentle halfling friends climbing the sharp, forbidding spires. It made his heart quail within him.

“May the light shine upon the hobbits,” Gimli said behind him, eerily as if reading his mind. “If our diversion is to work, they must be within the Black Land already, making their way toward--” he did not finish.

“So think Aragorn and Gandalf,” Legolas agreed. Alongside the road, an outflung arm of the mountain had begun to rise, throwing up a steep ridge that the men of Númenor had carved through in their roadmaking. Nothing but trees and bushes was visible-- though all about the road lay the marks and scars of war, with bloodied scuffs in the ground, plants trampled flat, and arrows sprouting like spines from the trunks of trees. Corpses lay scattered at intervals as well, oppressing Legolas with the foul scent of decay and the buzzing of flies.

“This land is accursed,” Gimli murmured, and his words fell like lead. Even Arod’s steps seemed dull and heavy, echoing in muffled gloom through the narrow confines of the passage.

“They will strike when we near the end of the cut,” Aragorn murmured. “We can only hope our reinforcements are in place by then.”

“Your mount,” Legolas suggested. “He limps.”

“Perhaps there is a stone in his shoe,” Aragorn said with a wink, and dismounted, taking out his knife. He labored over the horse’s shoe for many minutes while the troops waited patiently behind.

When Aragorn was satisfied they moved onward once more, Legolas keeping a sharp eye on the ridgetops-- there. A flicker of motion.

“Aragorn!” he warned.

“To arms!” Aragorn shouted, and the ringing scrape of metal announced swords drawn. Gimli flung himself sideways off Arod as Legolas drew his bow, and they were set for battle before the first raider arrow ever sang past their ears.

“Shields!” Aragorn called, and the battle leaders took up his cry. Legolas drew his bow and began picking off raiders as they dropped from the heights and poured in through the far end of the cut.

“Leave some alive for me,” Giml shouted aloud, and Legolas laughed. 

“There will be enough for that, never fear!”

The raiding party, like their own, had relied on their archers first, so Legolas had a few moments before the fray would reach him, during which all he had to fear was arrows. He occupied himself with his own, returning fire, glancing swiftly around him to be aware of his enemy’s arrows but focusing most of his energy on the familiar hum of tension in his arms and chest as he drew: the familiar rhythm of sighting a target, drawing, and letting fly even as he sought the next, knowing already that his arrow would strike its target.

As the foes flowed closer, Legolas saw many of the men dismounting to fight them upon the ground, at their level; now that combat was closer, he found his attention divided. Not only did he seek targets, and to avoid becoming one himself, but he found his gaze constantly sweeping over the melee on the ground, seeking a flash of red hair, his ears straining to catch a hint of the familiar dwarvish battle-cry.

Never would he tell Gimli that he spent so much time and attention in battle listening for him, but since Helm’s Deep, the dwarf’s safety had been a constant presence in his thoughts and he had sworn to himself that he would not allow such a separation again.

He scanned the battle once more, his eyes sweeping over each fight to determine where he might be most needed. His arrows were dwindling, and he wished to make each death count before he must dismount Arod and join the battle with his knives. Already he could see that the fight was in their favor. The raiders had not expected to be ambushed in their turn, and their force was not large; still, Legolas would make every arrow matter.

Before him, two men of Minas Tirith fought a massive orc with a spiked mace and a toothy grin; even between the two of them, it outmatched them. Legolas noticed with a pang that they were young-- insofar as he could tell such things among men anyway. It was not so much the build of their bodies that gave it away but the helpless terror in their faces; he could hear their labored breath when he focused on them. They fought valiantly, but exhaustion would overwhelm them soon--

Legolas’s arrow took the orc in the throat; another sprang up even as it fell and he shot that one, too, meaning only to clear the space around the young men and give them a moment to recover their wits and their strength. He had three arrows left, and even as he reached for them he was shifting his weight, readying himself to dismount when his quiver finally emptied.

Aragorn was fighting not far from him, battling two orcs at once. This time they were the ones outmatched; he would need no assistance. Legolas glanced around to be sure that the other captains fared as well, using two of the remaining arrows on a knot of Easterlings surrounding Imrahil; the prince was left with only one foe, who was hardly his match.

Battle was dwindling, Legolas realized, even as he watched; it might be that his intercession would hardly be needed-- and then he heard the familiar voice, and his head snapped around almost without his conscious intent.

“ _Khazad ai-menu!_ ”

Gimli fought some distance away, standing in the midst of a ring of hewn bodies, his face alight with battle-lust, his axe bloodied and gleaming, and even as Legolas watched it swung upward to cleave an orc’s arm from its shoulder; it howled in pain and clutched at the stump, and Gimli used that moment to disembowel it.

Legolas watched him, nearly transfixed by the power in Gimli’s arm, the defiance in his stance. He could not force his eyes away; all battle ceased to matter— or would have. For in that moment, Legolas caught sight of the Easterling creeping up behind Gimli, sword raised.

The cry left his lips before he had even felt it form in his throat; he swung around in the direction of Gimli’s fight even as he withdrew his last arrow from his quiver. It was good, he would reflect later, that his motions had become so automatic, for in that moment he could think nothing but _GimliGimliGimli_. His arrow was to his string in motions too fast for a mortal eye to follow; he drew, sighted, loosed.

His shot was perfect, of course, though for a moment he almost feared he had missed. The Easterling surely did not even know what had hit him; his knife made one more aborted jerk towards Gimli, he looked down almost in surprise at the arrow in his chest, then toppled slowly over. And all the while, Gimli did not turn-- he did not even notice how close he had come to death.

Quiver empty, Legolas slid down from Arod’s back and drew his knives, but as he did so he realized almost dully that he was shaking. He had strength yet to dispatch the remaining orcs, but his knuckles were white on the hilts of his knives and he wanted to sick up everything he had ever eaten.

A cry from above made him flinch-- the Nazgûl. So close to Mordor, their cries were far more potent than he had ever perceived before; it was as if a jagged blade sawed at the inside of his skull. 

Legolas flung himself near to Gimli, who also blanched and lost a stroke against the Easterling footsoldier who hacked at him with a great curved blade. Legolas stumbled and took the man’s hamstring as he went to one knee-- he managed to make it look graceful, but he very nearly fell prone even as Gimli’s opponent dropped screaming in spine-curdling harmony with the _úlair_. No, more than one. Three of them, wheeling in great, reeling circles about the sun, converging upon Aragorn like a murder of terrible, haggard crows stooping on a hawk they meant to harry to its death.

Aragorn stood forth, undaunted, and lifted Andúril in his right hand and held aloft the elfstone in the other, its green gem flashing in the sun. “Elendil!” he shouted-- but Gandalf carried the day. The white light of his staff flared so brightly Legolas could not look at it, and it sent the wraiths tumbling, wings of the fell beasts they rode half-tangled, until they fell away from one another and pulled up short of the ground, banking instead behind the ridge. 

They were gone and did not return to the site of the battle.

Around Aragorn’s company all the foes lay still. More bodies would now be left to stink beneath the sky.

“They test us, to learn our strength,” Aragorn said, wiping his blade. His face was grim.

“And they send a poor force in hopes of luring us forward in overconfidence,” Gandalf advised. “The next attack will not be so easily thwarted.”

“We will take the bait,” Aragorn nodded, sheathing Andúril once more “And walk within the jaws of their trap.” He went then to see to those few of the men who had been wounded.

Legolas’s head swam, and he only realized he had not yet risen when Gimli’s hand came to rest upon his shoulder. “Legolas.” The dwarf leaned close. “I thank you, elf. But you should not risk yourself so.”

“It was to save myself that I acted,” Legolas said. “For if I let you be slain, what would become of me, Gimli?” It was too much, but the words were freed, and he would not unsay them if he could.

Gimli stared at him in astonishment. “Elf…” he did not seem to know what to say, his tongue dampening his lower lip as he fumbled for words. Instead he squeezed Legolas’s shoulder, his eyes flaring with new life. And that more than anything gave Legolas at last the strength to stand, to find his way back to Arod once more.

The victory over their foes did nothing to lift the spirits of the company; still Legolas could feel the heaviness as it lay over them. Perhaps if they marched in blind confidence, as they pretended, they might have had reason to hope-- now, all they knew was that the eye of the Enemy was upon them. It was hope enough for the world, perhaps, but not for any of them-- and even less so when the Nazgûl returned to the sky above them, flying farther above than before, often out of sight of all but Legolas. They were not there to attack, now, but only to watch-- and to remind.

But Legolas at least took comfort in Gimli behind him, the firm clasp of his hands at Legolas’s waist and the reassuring sound of his breathing.

When they stopped for the night, all hearts were heavy and spirits low. Rations were distributed with little fanfare. Aragorn had taken to spending the evenings in quiet conference with Gandalf, Éomer, and Imrahil; Legolas and Gimli retreated, as usual, to eat together in what privacy they could manage.

“How are you, my friend?” Legolas asked Gimli, when it seemed they would not be disturbed. He had thought Gimli’s tension lessened somewhat, at least in comparison to the morning, as they rode-- but it was impossible to tell, with the cloak of despair that hung so heavy over the whole company. “Did the battle raise your spirits?”

“As much as it could,” said Gimli. His voice was weary, but when he looked up at Legolas, he managed a smile. “A long and wearing journey this is, with its only surety our death waiting at the end, but it helps to have something to break the monotony of the road.”

“Break the monotony indeed,” Legolas murmured. He could not shake the images from his mind, still, of Gimli with his back to a foe, utterly oblivious as to his own impending death; of the Nazgul’s intercession in battle at just the right moment to interfere with Legolas’s guard over his friend. He shivered; he could find himself wishing for boredom in the face of such an alternative, and without letting himself think about it, he reached over and laid his hand on Gimli’s knee, squeezing to feel it still solid and strong beneath his grip.

Gimli rested his own hand over Legolas’s, and looked at him as though he understood. “But it is not only the battle that warms my blood,” he said, and then paused, as though choosing his words with care. “More than that, it is the knowledge that I have a friend who fights beside me, whose blade I know I can trust at my back. As dark as the road may become, that heartens me enough to keep my feet on the path.”

Legolas remembered something he had heard Gimli say, so long ago now it seemed, in a distant time, and he smiled faintly. “Faithless is he…” he began.

“Aye.” Gimli chuckled, and pressed his hand. “You give me faith, my friend, however dark the road.”

Legolas bit his tongue until it ceased to tremble with words that ought not be said now, words of uncertainty that did not belong in this night of fear, in this precious moment of faith. “You give me the same,” was all he said instead.

They needed no more words-- not now, not tonight. But they sat together in silence, and for those few moments, their hearts were light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gimli only _thought_ Sauron was a terrible adversary. But that all pales compared to... _sentient vegetation!_ Tune in tomorrow to see the battle....


	4. Chapter 4

Was _every_ tree in Fangorn alive?

Gimli frowned, swatting at a slender branch that seemed to desire nothing more than to tangle itself in his beard.  Legolas had promised him that there were no Ents nearby, at least not for the moment, but it still seemed that there was a wakefulness in the forest, a presence that did not want him here.

Of course it ignored the elf.  Legolas walked unimpeded; Gimli could not tell if it was his own easy grace or if the trees simply bent out of his way.  It could be either-- for all that his friend’s broad, muscular form belied all Gimli had ever heard about the fragility of elves, he moved with all the elegance of a wild cat, especially among the forests he loved.

“Your forest does not trust me, Legolas,” Gimli grumbled, batting another twig aside before it could tear out a chunk of his hair.  “It seeks to imprison me.”

Legolas turned, alarmed for a moment, and then his expression melted into a soft smile.  “No,” he corrected gently, brushing the twig aside himself-- and, Gimli noted sourly, it stayed away after Legolas had touched it.  “It is wary, but mostly it is curious. Dwarves have not come here for many long years, and most of the younger trees have never seen your like before.  They only seek to understand what you are.”

“Aye, by wrapping me in their branches until I cannot move, so that they can devour me alive,” Gimli grumbled.  His axe felt heavy in his belt, but he knew nothing would do him worse than reaching for it now. “And then I will disappear, and all that will be left of me are legends of what happened to the one unwise dwarf who dared to venture into Fangorn!”

“Surely it is exactly those legends that cause your problems now,” Legolas said.  “For even as you and I were wary of one another, as elf and dwarf, all that came only of stories we had been told by others and not of our own experiences.  So, too, must you and the forest both learn better.” He reached for Gimli’s arm; startled, Gimli looked down and realized that Legolas had steadied him just as he would have tripped over a jutting tree root in his path.

“If it would have me think more kindly of it, it ought to make a friendlier first impression,” he grumbled, finding a safer place to set his foot.  “I have done nothing to warrant its distrust!”

“No,” Legolas agreed.  “And soon enough it will learn better.”  His face sharpened into an expression of concern.  “Does it really distress you so, being here?”

Gimli could not hold Legolas’s gaze for long.  “No,” he mumbled, letting his eyes slide back down to the ground.  Indeed, in some ways he could almost hope for the forest to keep him prisoner here for long years-- for surely Legolas would not leave him alone, and his heart was growing heavier by the day with the knowledge that the time would soon come for them to part.  “I may not see the beauty you do in this forest, but that does not mean I am eager to leave.”  He was not eager to do that at all-- though his reasons had nothing to do with the wood and everything to do with his companion.

“I am glad,” said Legolas.  “For I confess, I can understand how the forest views you.  You are so different from anything it has seen before.  You seem everything it has always thought to distrust, and yet you venture so bravely through it, undaunted by its dangers, and so its mistrust changes into curiosity and awe.  I think, rather than imprisoning you, it seeks to caress-- to learn all the shape and form of this one it has always wrongly believed its enemy.  Just as--” He broke off abruptly; when Gimli dared to look up, he saw that Legolas had gone pink.

He realized that Legolas still had hold of his arm, and he felt his own cheeks warming even as he tugged it free and sought to compose himself.  “Well,” he said gruffly, “I will hope you are right.”

“Perhaps I should scout ahead,” Legolas said, not quite looking at him.  “There are areas which are more friendly to outsiders than others, and it may be I can choose our way with more care as we go forward.”  

Gimli was left with the impression-- nay, the hope-- that their path was not the only thing Legolas would choose with care, but his words, as well.  There had been a fey mood upon the elf for some days now, as though he were oppressed by some of the same cares as Gimli. At the very least, he thought, watching Legolas dart away into the light-dappled shadows, he could tell the elf was not pleased by the growing specter of their inevitable parting.

“Stay where you are, and I will be back ere noon!”  Legolas called over his shoulder.  He moved so swiftly it was if he were on a wide plain with no obstacles to stay him.

“Do not fall and break an ankle-- if you leave me here, I may never find my way out!” Gimli called after him, and Legolas’s laughter gradually faded as he slipped away into the gloom.  

No, the elf would not fall.  Moreover, he would not lose or leave Gimli.  These things Gimli knew to the bone; he could trust Legolas with his very life.  If the elf called on him to topple from a precipice, he would without question, believing that the elf would catch him, or that worse would befall him if he lingered on its edge.  

Gimli sighed, flopping dispiritedly onto a tussock of promising ground at the base of a tangle of bushes.  He groaned, regretting it at once-- the ground was sodden with cold water, and the damp penetrated his breeches at once.  He jerked away, trying to rise-- but found that he was once again imprisoned by vegetation, as his thrashing had brought him into contact with the bushes behind his seat.

Gimli tried to twist his head, but the branches had snared themselves in his hair, beginning to drag strands free of his thick braid.  He craned his neck as far as he could without snatching himself bald. Closer inspection revealed that the plant was not a bush at all, but a jumble of purplish canes emerging from the ground, tipped in serrated clusters of heavily ridged leaves and bearing aloft little knotted green and red berries that Legolas had warned were not yet ripe enough to eat.  Worse than that, though, were the wicked thorns adorning each of the canes-- thorns so thickly distributed that if he seized one of the branches, he would be speared immediately in a thousand places. Gimli scowled at the bush, wondering how quickly the thorns had sprouted, and whether they were specifically meant for him-- he had seen such plants before, but on most of them the thorns had been scattered, the canes bearing perhaps half a dozen in the space that would be covered by the breadth of a hand.  

Cautiously sacrificing two fingertips to the prickling sting of the brambles, Gimli tried to lever a branch away from his head-- but succeeded merely in attaching a dozen more briars to various part of his clothing.  “Drat the dratted forest,” he growled-- which was, in retrospect, an error. The branches leaned even more heavily over him, several more seizing upon his hair, one scratching his cheek.

Gimli went absolutely still, not even wiping away the trickle of blood making its way into his beard.  “You have a strange way of _caressing_ ,” he grumbled. “Release me; I mean no harm!”

But Gimli did not have the power of Legolas to speak to the plants and animals of the wood-- and there was no Ent near with whom he might reason, and no elf to soothe the wrath of the angry briars.  All he could do was remain still and quiet-- because the only words that might leave his mouth now would surely not endear him to the forest any further.

As he sat as though transfixed, he tried to give thought to how he might free himself, if given the chance.  He would need the use of his hands, of course, which meant that the branches would have to decide to let him go-- and it all stopped there.  If the brambles did not want him to be freed, he would not be.

He let out a heavy breath through clenched teeth-- that, he could not restrain.  Gimli did not like feeling helpless, particularly in such a situation as this, when his captors were merely trees and brambles.  How ludicrous he must look, and how his kin would laugh if they saw him here: hopelessly entangled in a forest he had entered only for l-- for the sake of an elf!  He ought to have known better.

And yet, as he sat there, forcing himself to stay entirely still, he _felt_ something change around him.  He swore he never felt them move; rather, from one moment to the next, it merely seemed to be different. The grip on him was looser, the thorns no longer grazing dangerously just against his skin but rather a breath further away, and then further still.  He tried an experimental motion of his hand, and found that it was no longer quite as restricted as it had been before.

“Have I passed your test, then?” he said, only somewhat succeeding in keeping the bitterness from his tone.

But it seemed he had, for the grip around his whole body had lessened, the brambles-- again, he did not see them move, but he could only assume that they had, for they were no longer cradling him in their thorny embrace, but rather only brushing against his arms and back as he made, at last, cautiously, to rise--

And was stopped short by a yank on his hair.

He hissed in pain and stopped where he was, raised onto his knees.  “Did you need something more from me?” he said aloud, and clenched his teeth against the imagined laughter of his kin in his head.  Talking to trees, now, as though they would answer! What had Legolas done to him?

There was another tug on his hair, and he yelped as his head was jerked back.  “What?” he demanded, but of course there was no answer. He sighed, resigned to his fate, and waited for the brambles to approach again, to wrap him up and draw him into their thickets until there was nothing left of him--

But again, nothing happened.  Just that tug on his hair, and it felt, he realized suddenly, not as though the brambles were trying to tug him closer, but rather that _they_ were trying to pull _back_...

Very cautiously, wary of arousing their ire once more, he twisted his head, wincing as the motion brought his head _under_ the tangle of his own hair.  Yes, he was trapped, that was certain-- strands of hair actually knotted around branches, beads and fasteners wedged into leaves--

He stared, incredulous.  “You can’t get yourselves out of this, can you?” he demanded.

The briars rustled in a nonexistent wind, in what he might have almost called a sheepish manner.

“Then we are all of us at the mercy of the elf!”  Gimli tried to crane his neck far enough to see where the sun was in its course-- how long might remain ere noon?-- but he was only making his predicament worse.  

There would be few other options, for Gimli did not dare venture an attempt to cut himself free by hacking at the brambles; they would surely not greet such a hostile act with kindness.  Though he might yet cut his way free, he would not have to cut the branches at all, but instead his hair, leaving the briars with the trophies they had claimed of a dwarf just as he bore the locks of Galadriel tucked in a little pouch and carried with care in his pack.  

Gimli sat in misery, cold water seeping inevitably through his breeches, every small gust of wind tugging at his trapped hair and tangling him all the more.  He weighed the shame of being found so by the elf versus the truly unthinkable-- cutting his hair and leaving it ragged. Gimli’s locks had not known the touch of a knife since his beard began to grow!

“It is a fine mess we find ourselves in,” he grumbled at the bramble canes, easing his hand into his pocket and fingering the sharp knife he kept there.  “Either I must cut my hair, or cut you-- I am not planning to do it, so you needn’t think of seizing me again!-- or I must wait for Legolas to come back and free me.”

The thought of the elf teasing free Gimli’s hair from the branches that bound it gave Gimli a long, slow shiver, echoed in the surrounding foliage by a sharp gust of wind.  Several individual hairs were caught tight, and the pain of the yank was enough to make Gimli’s eyes water. He cursed quietly to himself, keeping his head bent forward to ease the worst of the strain.

He was not left long to ponder what he would do, for very soon indeed the melody of elf-song wafted to him on the wind.  He felt the briars quiver as if they, too, listened. But he could not find the elf, even as the song drew near-- until Legolas fell to earth before Gimli, vaulting lightly down from the treetops which he had made his highway.

“What is this?”  Legolas laughed aloud.  “Did you offend the blackberries, my friend, that they sought to punish you-- or did you make them grow so fond they would not suffer you to leave?”

“I did nothing to provoke them!” Gimli protested, trying to ignore the way Legolas’s eyes lingered on him.  “They did this all to themselves, and now, if I understand correctly, they cannot devise a way to undo it.” He glared at the bushes, which at least had the decency to look mildly ashamed of themselves.

Legolas laughed again, quieter this time-- low and rich.  “Did they?” he murmured, coming a few steps closer and reaching out to touch the branches where Gimli’s hair was knotted in.  A shiver rustled through them, and Gimli knew not where it originated, but only that it swept through his own body as well. “Were I a wise loremaster like the lord Elrond, I would surely have some words to say of the tangles that ensue when we allow prejudices to drive our actions.”  He grinned. “As I am not, I can only confess to great amusement.”

“Be amused later,” Gimli grumbled.  “If you could bring yourself now, in all your benevolence, to free me, I am sure that both I and the blackberries would be much obliged.”

“Of course,” murmured Legolas.  He had come closer still as Gimli spoke, and now he knelt between Gimli and the blackberries and bent over the tangle, so close that Gimli could feel the elf’s warm breath on the back of his neck.  “I am merely considering-- how did you manage this?”  His tone was one of amused disbelief, and Gimli knew not whether Legolas spoke to him or to the bushes.  “Truly, I begin to think that my second guess was correct, my friend, and that the bushes never wished to let you go!”

“But you can untangle it?” Gimli demanded.  The knife suddenly felt heavier in his pocket-- after all his hopes for Legolas’s arrival, to think that he would have to cut his hair free after all--

“I can.”  Legolas bent his head even closer, his lips practically brushing the exposed underside of Gimli’s hair and sending more shivers through his body.  His fingers picked carefully at where the hair had become wound around one of the slender branches-- a tangle smaller than his hands should have been able to manage, but Gimli knew well that large hands could do very delicate work.  It was only-- he had rarely had such opportunity to see it from Legolas, and knowing that those fingers were prising carefully at his own hair, with such concentration and yet such gentleness--

He took a deep breath, hoping that would steady his suddenly-racing heart.

“Be still,” Legolas murmured, his breath tickling at Gimli’s ear.  It seemed as if the whole world listened; the wind ceased its play and the birds were quiet amidst the trees.  Gimli’s flesh tingled as if aching for the press of the elf’s lips; he closed his eyes and obeyed, all but ceasing to breathe.  

Legolas’s own hair fell in a soft silken waterfall to brush against Gimli’s shoulder and cheek; he raised a silent prayer to Mahal to be merciful upon him and lend him strength.  Every part of him quivered, yearning toward Legolas as a flower turned toward the spring sun.

“It will not be long.”

Perhaps not, but Gimli might almost have wished it would take an age-- or that he and the elf might both be entangled here and remain always, entwined with the branches until their hair grew long and braided itself together and grew all the way to the Entwash, sweeping along the forest floor in a torrent of mingled red and gold, for unwary creatures to see and marvel over as they went about their business, foraging among the blackberries.

As Legolas freed each berry cane, they seemed to arch away, a tame and harmless bit of woodland greenery-- there were far fewer thorns now than before, Gimli would warrant!  And from the corner of his eye, he watched as the berries swelled, turning crimson, then grew fat and dark, each individual cluster shining under the sunlight.

The elf began to hum, soothing music by Gimli’s ear, and he fell into a daze, made somnolent by the waxing warmth of the sun and the nearness of the elf and his music.  He might almost have nodded, sinking against Legolas’s arm, but he pinched his thigh and stubbornly remained wakeful as the elf worked, a small smile lifting his lips into a faint curve, as if he enjoyed having his fingers amidst a dwarf’s locks.

Preposterous.  Blasphemous, even.  Yet the curl of warmth in Gimli’s belly did not come from the sun alone.  It came also from the sight of the elf’s smooth cheek and strong jaw in the corner of his eye, and from the pleasant scent of leather and moss and bowstring-oil that the elf always carried about him.

“Nearly there,” murmured Legolas, his breath gusting through Gimli’s hair and stirring the strands, and Gimli could only regret that it would soon be finished, almost wishing once more that the branches had tangled themselves even tighter, so that this would never have to end.  “Hold out your hand.”

The words were so surprising that Gimli almost thought he had misheard them, lost as he was in the daze of warm near-sleep.  But then one of Legolas’s hands had closed around his wrist, warm and strong, and turned up his palm. The other came to rest against it, and there was a quiet clicking sound as Legolas spilled a small cascade of beads into Gimli’s palm.  “You would not like to lose these, I think.”

“No,” Gimli said, his lips slow and numb with relaxation, but he forced himself to focus, scooping at the edges of the puddle he was about to become and molding himself back into shape.  And to his surprise, when he jerked himself upright, he met no resistance-- the last of his hair slid free of the brambles. But still Legolas did not move, remaining so close beside him that their faces might almost have touched, if Gimli leaned forward just a bit.

He bit back the sudden desire to do so and gazed down instead, at the beads that Legolas had carefully untangled from his braids, looking at them as though they were somehow different than they had been only this morning.  And perhaps they were-- for like everything about Gimli, they seemed to have become more precious since the elf had touched them.

“The bushes did not know what they held, I think, when they reached for your hair,” mused Legolas.   “More stubborn it is than any living creature’s hair I have ever encountered, and more resistant to unknotting!  I can understand their fascination-- and their dismay when they realized they had found their match!”

“Stubborn indeed,” said Gimli.  “It takes skill and grace to untangle a dwarf’s hair; I am glad your hands are so capable.”

He realized what he had said only after it left his lips, and turned his head-- glorying in the freedom to do so-- to avoid Legolas’s eyes; still, he saw the elf flush pink.  “Thank you,” was all Legolas said.

“No, I thank you.”  Gimli hesitated, but confessed it.  Truly, Legolas deserved this thanks.  “I had begun to despair of escaping, and had feared I would have to cut my own hair to get free.”

Legolas’s intake of breath was almost imperceptible, but they were so close still that Gimli could feel every motion he made.  “Well, I am glad I was here, then,” he said at last, softly. “For the thought of a blade coming near such magnificent hair as yours-- it does not bear imagining.”

Gimli felt himself flush so deeply he feared he might turn the same color as the juice of a blackberry.  “Truly elves have magic in their tongues, to make a crusty heart such as mine give ear to such flattery,” he muttered.   “You have made a habit of rescuing me, it seems. Thank you again.”

“The brambles are grateful to us as well-- to you for refusing to cut them to free yourself, and to me for freeing them,” Legolas murmured, strangely hoarse.  “Look, they have rewarded us.” He reached to touch a heavy cluster of fruit, lush and ripe. “We will eat well today, m-- my friend.” He reached and pulled one soft, ripe berry free and held it out to Gimli, the dark purple juice staining his long, pale fingers.

Gimli gulped hard at the urge that arose in his mind, pushing it fiercely away and taking the berry with his own fingers instead.  “Yes,” he said, and let the tart juice trickle over his tongue. “We will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Gimli... nature really hates him. And this is just the _beginning._ Join us next chapter for even more painful torment... but it's not without its rewards.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the next two chapters, we've sent Legolas and Gimli on a diplomatic mission to Harad. Why Aragorn assigned these two to be his diplomats... it's better not to ask. This chapter also has a mildly cracky premise. Again-- don't ask, just enjoy.
> 
> Also, warning if you are triggered by insects-- LOTS of bugs in this chapter.

The heap of earth on the ground before his feet had nothing to recommend it, so Gimli simply stamped past it without a second thought and stopped by the waterside to survey the way before them, contemplating their future direction.  He and the elf might go up, away from the waterside, and find more solid footing-- or they might remain in the lowlands, where the land was all but marsh, but there were fewer trees and boulders and obstacles in general.

“It is a tossup,” he grumbled to himself, wondering where the elf had got to.  “If we go up we suffer, but if we remain at the riverside we suffer differently.”  Gimli scowled at the innocent water, then turned back to survey the fringe of cattails separating him from the previous patch of marsh-- he bore the muddy traces of passing through it most of the way up to his armpits, but despite his seeming bulk, Legolas had skipped lightly from tussock to tussock, barely wetting the soles of his soft boots.  Doubtless the elf would prefer to remain at a lower elevation, if only to laugh at his struggles.

Gimli shook his head as though responding to some unheard word-- spoken within his own mind, whispering to him a reminder he did not wish to acknowledge.  The elf. What was he to do about the elf? Things could not go on for much longer as they were; of that he was certain.  And yet… he lacked the courage to do aught about what he felt; there had been hints that his affection might be returned in kind, but he could never muster enough certainty to venture an advance.

Cross with himself, Gimli scuffed a foot through the sandy ground-- it was drier here, at least, and he aimed a kick at the heap of earth before him, watching it explode with satisfaction.

“Dratted elf,” he muttered, with as much affection as aggravation.  “How are we ever to find the caliph for Aragorn if Legolas wanders astray to sing to every bit of bog-cotton we pass?”

He frowned, lifting his foot and shaking it in irritation.  Something against his ankle tickled, as though a leaf had brushed against him-- but his feet and lower legs were encased entirely in his boots, and the fabric of his breeches and tunic was thick, not to mention his mail.  Surely there was no avenue for any leaves or other undergrowth to reach his skin.

But even as he puzzled, the tickle morphed into a burning sensation, small but fierce, as though someone had pressed a lit match just to the side of his ankle.  He let out a hiss of pain, unable to stop himself.

Before he could even look down to see what was amiss, it happened again: a tickle, then a burn, farther up his leg this time, as though something was _inside_ his clothing.  Diverted for a moment from wondering where it came from, he swatted at the spot in reflex, and in doing so, looked down.

And stood, for a moment transfixed in horror.

At first, it seemed like nothing too serious-- a few insects crawling over his boots and up his legs, and while their trajectory was alarming, it was nothing he would be unable to handle-- but then he looked beyond himself to find that the ground seemed to have come alive.  A layer of motion seemed to have covered it, burnt red and gleaming dully, rippling slightly over the earth-mass that he had kicked. They were _all_ the insects, he realized in horror-- a seething tide of red ants, so many that he could not see the earth beneath him-- swarming towards _him_.

Another sharp sting made itself known-- on his upper thigh this time-- and he realized that they were crawling onto him, inside his clothing.  He swatted at the place where he had been stung, and three more erupted on his other leg as the tide threatened to engulf his shoes.

For once in Gimli’s life, he did not even think of standing and facing his opponent.  He turned and ran.

And yet, though he escaped the immediate vicinity of the nest he had disturbed, his flight did nothing to thwart the ants that were already upon him.  They continued to sting, crawling beneath his clothing and working their way into ever more tender areas-- and slapping did nothing to discourage them, for they were beneath his tunics and his mail.

Gimli ran into the water, hoping that at least would discourage them, but it did not; they were on him already, swarming, biting, _burning_.  Frantic, Gimli scrabbled for his tunic, yanking free the knot and hauling it off his head.  He threw it to a spot on the opposite bank, far from the nest.

“Gimli!”  Of course, the elf chose that moment to arrive, and Legolas started toward him with obvious dismay.

“Stay away from that ground!”  Gimli barked; he would not have the elf suffer this!  He could not spare a thought for modesty, ripping at his clothing and flinging bits of it everywhere in a frenzy to get at the biting ants.  

Legolas looked down, his eyes going wide.  “You have disturbed their nest!”

“Tell me something I did not know!”  Gimli felt as though he’d stepped into a whirlwind of fire; everywhere the ants went, new stings scorched him afresh.  He had handled metal fresh from the forge with only fire-gloves; fear of heat was not a concern of his race. But this….!

Gimli flung his chainmail shirt aside with a mighty heave, then clawed for the hem of the undertunic beneath.  Legolas, of course, began to sing, curse him… a song to the ants, soothing them to forget the frenzy caused by their demolished hill.  Gimli ignored the song; it would do nothing for the ants on him or the stings he’d already suffered. There were even ants in his beard-- in his _hair_!

“A plague on these wretched, accursed vermin!”  Gimli bellowed, baring his chest to the elements against all propriety-- his fathers would be scandalized to think he had stripped himself beneath the sky.  In front of an elf, no less! Dozens of ants crawled over him, sinking their pincers savagely even as he watched. He ducked beneath the water, but it did not help.  Roaring, he surfaced, slinging water from his braids, and lunged to shove down his pants, kicking frantically to loosen his iron-shod boots so he could remove them. One boot went flying toward the shore, narrowly missing the elf, who ducked it by graceful reflex, and the other plopped into the river, where it promptly sank.  In his desperation, Gimli could hardly care if he would find it again.

Gimli slapped at himself in wild flailing motions; the damned things were even inside his breechclout!  He roared and tore it from himself-- first things first; his priorities were in order-- and began smashing the things between his fingers and thumbs wherever they had latched onto his skin, seeking them out through the wiry thatch of red hair that grew there, absolutely forgetting that Legolas was watching.

The ants were resilient: no mere graze would crush them, and he had to kill them one by one even as the others continued to crawl over his body, biting and biting-- Gimli felt as though he were being torn apart, burned and eaten alive at the same time, his world dissolving into a red haze of agony.  Never before had he attempted precision work under _this_ kind of strain! And yet he must, for his only other option was to let them remain on him, stinging and stinging and stinging.  How were they still alive in the water, how was it that they would not leave him alone, let him go--?

He did not hear the splashing, no longer even heard the singing through the buzzing in his ears and the harsh growling of his own breath, wrenched from his lungs in frantic sounds of desperate anguish.  But suddenly there was a pair of gentle hands on his body, another presence stirring the waters beside him, and the elf’s voice reached his ears dimly, on a brief break in the song.

“Here.”

Legolas, of course-- of _course_.  He had waded out into the water fully clothed, only waist deep where Gimli stood to his chest, but his sleeves dripped where his arms had trailed in the water.  He took up his song once more, soothing, coaxing the ants to crawl onto him-- it was more kindness than they deserved, Gimli thought, his own hands still occupied with defending the most sensitive parts of his body, and he could hardly spare the attention to be ashamed of it.  But it seemed to work, for though it still felt as though all his skin was aflame, he could see the ants crawling from his chest and shoulders onto Legolas’s hands, and up his arms.

“Don’t,” he croaked, but Legolas did not listen to him and carried on with his song, now moving his hands lower, beneath the surface of the water, over Gimli’s chest and belly and lower still, until they joined Gimli’s own hands.  Gimli spluttered and tried to jerk away, overcome for the moment by whatever remained of his modesty, but he felt the tickling legs of dozens of ants crawling away from him, up Legolas’s arms and neck and face, and Gimli stared at him in horror, but Legolas kept singing, and the ants did not seem to be hurting him.

It was hard to tell, now, what was new pain and what was old-- how much of the burning agony was simply from the hundreds of bites he had already received, and how much of it was still being inflicted, but it did seem to be lessening.  He reached to crush the ants on his lower body and found only a few still crawling there.

And then Legolas reached for his beard.

Gimli tried to jerk away, then hissed anew as he felt another prick of fire against the side of his neck.  Legolas stopped singing for just a moment to say, “Be still.” But he winced as he spoke, and took up his song once more, and Gimli realized that the singing was protecting him from the same fate that had befallen Gimli.  Any time he needed to stop to reassure him, the ants would renew their attack, regardless of whom they were attacking. And this, Gimli was rapidly learning, was a fate he would not wish on his worst enemy, least of all on his-- on Legolas.  

So he subsided and let Legolas continue.  The elf buried his hands in Gimli’s beard and then his hair, acquiring trickle after trickle of strangely docile ants on his hands and arms and face and neck until he seemed some strange otherworldly creature coated in insects.  Gimli could not repress a shiver at the sight of him, sending a stab of ice through the flames engulfing him.

And then, very slowly and carefully, Legolas waded out of the water and back to the nest, where he knelt and placed his hands gently on the ground, allowing the ants to flow off of him and back into their disturbed home-- a fate, Gimli thought, much kinder than they deserved.

But as soon as the last of the insects had left him, Legolas rose with no trace of the calm that he had displayed only moments before.  His wet breeches clung to his legs with a lover’s touch, tempting Gimli to fill his gaze with the unfamiliar line of the elf’s powerful thighs, but there was no time for that.  The elf’s face filled with nothing but concern, and he sloshed back into the water with none of his usual grace.

“How badly are you stung, my friend?”  Legolas reached to seize and examine him, studying him with a frown, and at that moment Gimli realized he was bare as the day he was born.  

“It is not so bad,” he insisted stoutly, but he still felt as if he were aflame-- both with embarrassment and with pain.  The damned ants had all but eaten him alive! “You did not tell me that such things were to be feared here.”

“This is farther north than I have seen such insects before.”  Legolas’s fingertips wandered to and fro across Gimli’s shoulders and chest-- his privates were mercifully submerged beneath the surface of the water.  “You have many stings, Gimli,” he chided, his voice sharp with worry. “You should have called for aid the first moment you were bitten.”

“I did not think it so bad at first.  I did not know I had incurred the wrath of a horde!”

“You will need care and tending.  If you do not receive aid, these bites linger for many days; if you scratch them, they may grow infected and fester.”  Legolas hesitated. “You are in pain.”

Gimli scowled at him, not wanting to seem weak, but the elf had stated it as a fact rather than a question.  “And the sun is hot, Legolas,” he grumbled. “We have no healer with us to tend bites such as these. It is fortunate that they are merely an inconvenience.”

Legolas ran his wet hand over his face, at a momentary loss for words; he left the argument for the moment and moved past him toward a deeper portion of the stream, fishing beneath the surface and rising in triumph with Gimli’s boot.  “You would have missed this sorely,” he said, tipping water out and letting it pour into the stream once more.

“Aye, so I would,” Gimli huffed, struggling already not to scratch at the agonizing burning sensation that covered his body.  “And yet it is fortunate, elf, that my people are wrong when they say an elf could not pour piss out of a boot with instructions engraved upon the heel!”

Legolas pouted at him, the upward curve of a smile struggling to escape even as he did so.  Sunlight caught in his golden hair, giving him a halo; he shone so radiantly at that moment that the swell of love in Gimli’s heart very nearly eclipsed the pain of the stings-- but they were so terrible that the spell lasted for only a moment.

“I have heard that no dwarf will ever remove his raiment under the sky,” Legolas said softly.  “But only under stone, and even then solely in the safety of his private chambers. And truly, I have only ever seen you remove your outer layer within the keep of Helm’s Deep, to improve your armor.  That is how I know you are suffering beyond what you wish to bear.” He surveyed Gimli so intently that Gimli felt himself blushing.

“Aye, well,” Gimli growled to cover his discomposure.  “Maybe we are a modest race, but you elves are only too eager to remove every stitch you ever wore and bathe in any puddle we pass!”  He should not have said that; it said too much about how much attention he had paid to those moments. But pain made him incautious.

Legolas reached out again to touch Gimli’s shoulder; Gimli hissed through his teeth at the touch-- it seemed to promise at first to relieve the burning itch, only to make it worse when the potential was not fulfilled.  “You are trying to divert me,” said Legolas. “And it is a valiant effort, but I can see your discomfort. Can you fault me for wishing to alleviate it?”

“Perhaps I am trying to distract myself,” Gimli retorted, “and you are not allowing me to.”  He shrugged Legolas’s hand off of his shoulder, clenching his own hands into fists to keep from raking his fingernails over every inch of his own skin.  His palms were not immune; as his fingernails dug into the bites there, the burning was relieved for one glorious moment before returning again, worse even than before.  “We both know I am in pain, and we both know that that has no bearing on our situation. You said yourself that we have no healer, and I know nothing of these insects myself.  So unless you know of some miracle elven remedy, I will simply have to bear it as best I can.”

He turned resolutely away from Legolas, looking around for the clothing he had thrown away.  Surely if any ants remained on it, they would have drowned after this long beneath the water?  He shoved past Legolas, trying to resist the urge to press his itching side against his friend’s clothing like an overly-affectionate cat, and peered beneath the surface of the water seeking his fallen garments.

There!  There were his breeches, crumpled at the bottom and caught on the edge of a broken tree branch.  Doubtless they would be full of all sorts of muck, but hopefully no more ants-- and he could not afford to lose them, not when he had only one spare pair in his pack.  He bent to pick them up--

And his ears roared, all the blood in his body seeming to rush to his head, threatening to overbalance him and send him face-first into the water.  He swayed dangerously, trying to right himself, but unable to get his bearings--

And then his shoulders were caught in an iron grip, and he was pulled back upright and braced against a broad, hard-muscled chest.  Legolas. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trembling-- never had he expected to press so much of his skin against the elf!

“Enough,” Legolas said firmly, mistaking passion for pain.  “Come with me to the bank, and we will find a place for you to sit-- out of the reach of the ants, I promise.  Then I will retrieve your clothing and tend your bites.”

The moss on the bank where Legolas seated him felt unpleasantly cold and squashy beneath Gimli’s arse, and he scowled, struggling against a compulsion to fold his hands over his privates to shield them from the elf’s gaze.  Truly, Legolas had not behaved inappropriately; his gaze did not linger either in mockery or with undue interest. He merely sought to give aid to Gimli in his distress.

Gimli did not know whether to be more relieved or disappointed by that, and settled for general discomfort that had much to do with being unclad and exposed to the glare of the sun and the indelicate caress of the wind-- neither of which did anything to ease the burning of the inflamed bites.  It felt as though he had been stabbed with a thousand red-hot needles tipped in acid! Even now as he sat on the cool moss there was no relief.

Legolas moved about, gathering Gimli’s clothing-- including the shreds of his breechclout, which would never do service as a garment again, so hasty and fierce had been Gimli’s need to rid himself of it.  The elf clucked his tongue and fussed over the sheer number of pieces-- and possibly also their condition, though Gimli could not hear what he said.  It had been a long and taxing journey, after all, and there had been little enough opportunity to launder them.  

Gimli refused to feel shame over that, for all that Legolas’s own tendencies towards cleanliness implied he should.  Mortals were not elves, pure and pristine as ice without ever showing an inkling of oil or sweat upon their skins.  Mortals were as they were made, and however Gimli’s clothing might smell, he had never come near rivaling Aragorn after three days’ run through Rohan.  

“I see not why you need so many things between you and the air,” Legolas joked at length, depositing Gimli’s clothes in a heap at his side-- trying to put him at ease.  Guiltily, Gimli jerked his own hand back from his thigh, where he had been tempted to scratch at the welts rising there.  “The climate is warm hereabouts. Do you not stifle in them?”

“And I see not how you can make do with so few,” grumbled Gimli, shifting uncomfortably to have Legolas so close to his exposed body but grateful for the distraction from the way the wind brushed over his inflamed skin, seeming only to waken it to _more_ sensation.  At this moment, he wished for even more layers than his usual-- he wished for layers beneath his very skin, to protect him from the burning. “Do you not feel like a peeled fruit, left to brown in the air?”

A smile teased at the corners of Legolas’s lips.  “No, I can truly say that I have never felt thus. And with fewer articles of clothing, there is less to remove in the event of an attack by fire ants--or for other reasons.”  He did not elaborate upon those reasons now, and Gimli was in too much discomfort to press the issue.  Legolas nudged Gimli’s clothing aside and settled cross-legged beside him.  Still his eyes did not stray, his gaze remaining steady on Gimli’s face, but Gimli fought the urge to cover himself anyway.  He kept his hands where they were, clutched in the moss at his sides, fingernails tearing at the green to keep from ripping at his skin.

“Then elves are not immune to such attacks?”  Teasing was easier than talking seriously, and Gimli found himself curious.  He had always thought of elves as untouchable by anything in nature, envying the ease with which Legolas skipped over snow and mud that buried Gimli to his waist, with which he ran through forests without receiving a single scratch from thorns or branches.  But now, looking closely at his friend, he saw that his pain-clouded mind had observed correctly before: Legolas had not escaped the encounter entirely unscathed. A few red welts were already rising on his exposed neck, and one on his forehead where his hair had been pulled back.  “No, I suppose not,” he answered his own question. “You were bitten as well!”

“What, these?”  Legolas reached up to touch his neck.  “They are no matter. You fared far worse, my friend, and you will not succeed in your efforts to turn me away from your pain.”

“Then what do you propose we do about it?” grumbled Gimli.  “I have told you already, I seek to distract myself, that I might not dwell on this discomfort for however long it remains.  If you have a better solution, pray tell me.”

“I may.”  Legolas hesitated for a long moment, looking away from Gimli and off into the distance.  “I know not if it would-- this is not a treatment that has been attempted on a dwarf before, at least not to my knowledge, but I cannot imagine that it would fail; it is only-- I hardly dare to suggest it, and yet I cannot bear to see you in such discomfort.”

“Do not be coy about this, Legolas!”  Gimli bit back a growl of frustration.  “If you have some cure in mind, tell me now and stop prolonging it.  You are the one who continually mentions my discomfort; if you would have it ended, do not delay about it!”  The words came out more harshly than he had intended them; he knew Legolas would not hesitate about something unimportant, but he could feel the blood pounding just under his skin in the dozens-- hundreds?-- of bites all over his body, individual spots that all seemed connected by a general dull burn over the entirety of his skin, and it was all he could do not to claw it all off immediately.

And yet Legolas did not hurry; instead, he remained quiet for another moment, and still he would not look at Gimli.

“There is a treatment,” he said at last.  “And it would ease the pain of the bites, but I hesitate because I know not whether it would truly lessen your discomfort, or rather worsen it.”

“It sounds a most dreadful treatment indeed, if it is worse than the pain of being eaten alive!”  Gimli squirmed in spite of himself; there were bites on his arse, and sitting on them was doing them no good at all.  

Legolas sighed.  “Very well then, but do not say I failed to warn you.”  Legolas hesitated even then. “You are, of course, free to refuse--"

“Legolas!”  Gimli twitched, his entire skin aflame.

“It is a remedy my people used of old,” Legolas raised his palms when Gimli would have yowled aloud.  “It is to suck the venom from the bites, and then to soothe them by licking. It may require repeated applications.”

Gimli stared at him, wild-eyed.  “What madness is this?” he could scarcely credit the elf’s words.  “Would you make a mockery of me in my affliction?”

“Nay, I would not!”  Legolas spread his palms in apology.  “I knew you would doubt me. But this is the remedy I know-- and if it works as I have seen it before, it will give significant relief, and swiftly.  Would that Aragorn were here, that you might ask him if I speak truth!”

Gimli was rather pleased Aragorn was not with them, especially as he was of a mind to accept the treatment-- his chest had begun to feel tight, and his breath came harshly through his throat.  Not all of that was the bites-- some of it was the thought of Legolas’s sleek head bent over his lap as the remedy was applied--

Gimli flushed crimson, and the elf tilted his head, observing it.  “You will let me, then,” he said with relief. “That is well.” He raised Gimli’s arm and turned up the pale flesh inside his elbow.  Red welts speckled Gimli’s skin there, where it was nearly hairless. “We shall see how well it works, and begin here, if you will not reproach me for it.”

“Very well,” Gimli struggled to keep his tone even.  “But I would ask you not to speak of this to any other, if you are truly my friend!  It is not… fitting, for me to sit here thus, unclad as I am, and allow another such…” he swallowed hard, “liberties.”

“I will not,” Legolas vowed.  “Though I confess, I may burst from the effort of silence.”  His eyes sparkled.

“And I may burst if this treatment does not work!”  Gimli closed his eyes for a moment, praying for composure.  “Try it, then.”

“Very well.”  Legolas laid his hands firm upon Gimli’s arm.  He studied it for a moment, then bent forward, lips parted.  Gimli’s heart lurched and if not for the anguish of the bites, he would have shamed himself in that moment, for the spectacle of the elf bending to set lips upon his skin sent a pang of desperate yearning through him.

Sunlight gleamed on the elf’s skin and hair, gilding them with beauty as he bent slowly forward and settled his lips over a welt near Gimli’s wrist.  

Gimli swallowed hard at the gentle, wet press-- lips softer than silk, mouth warm as the sunlight burning into the crown of Gimli’s head.  He stored the memory away as he would a treasure, locking it deep in the vault of his heart.

He could not deny that the pain lessened where the elf’s mouth touched.  It was as if the fire was drawn out of him by gentle stages-- in that one spot alone.  And when Legolas’s tongue touched the welted flesh, Gimli sighed in spite of himself and closed his eyes to shut out the sight lest he shame himself by uttering words he could not recall.

“It is working?”  The sound of Legolas’s voice, and the tingling of the air on skin damp from his ministrations, forced Gimli’s eyes open.  He clenched his teeth hard at the sight that greeted him: Legolas, with Gimli’s arm still raised to his face, lips wet and pink, eyes turned up, wide and hopeful, to look into Gimli’s own.

“It is.”  He hardly recognized his own voice, dry and raspy, but he found that he had no saliva to swallow.  He shifted in his seat, and could not hold back a grimace as another wave of flame seemed to sweep over him, burning away that moment of relief.

Legolas caught it, his eyes sharpening at the motion of Gimli’s face.  “Then I will continue,” he said, and Gimli could only nod, unable to keep back another sigh when Legolas’s lips latched onto him again.

He worked his way carefully up Gimli’s right arm, the agony slower to abate than it had been to come on-- but then, there had been hundreds of ants, and there was only one of Legolas.  And Gimli could not deny that he was glad of that, for all that the treatment was slow work. If he had to be here, bare and humiliated and burning, having venom sucked slowly out of one wound after another, he would have it be before no other but Legolas.

No other but Legolas, indeed.  Gimli underwent the treatment with eyes open and then with them closed; it did not seem to make a difference.  For all that he had to restrain himself at the sight of Legolas bent over him, lips and tongue working at Gimli’s skin, it was just as bad with eyes closed, when he could lose his surroundings in the darkness.  It was easier to pretend that they were somewhere else when he had no sight to distract him from the feeling of Legolas sucking gently on him, occasionally grazing the stings with teeth that offered a moment of glorious relief for the itching and also a tantalizing sting of pain, and then soothing raw flesh with flicks of his tongue.  With each bite that Legolas treated, Gimli felt his head clearing until he could focus even more on feelings that were not his discomfort-- and gradually it became even more difficult to restrain himself.

Legolas worked his way up both arms, and then tended the bites on Gimli’s hands-- those were worse, somehow; despite all the calluses on his fingers and the heels of his hands, the ants had targeted the soft skin in the middle of his palms.  And for all that Gimli’s hands had endured in long years of fighting and forging alike, the sensations were somehow even more intense here than elsewhere: Legolas cradling one of Gimli’s hands in both of his own and lifting it to his mouth, the gentle tug of lips and tongue against the sensitive skin of his palms and fingers.  Gimli found himself fighting desperately to think of anything else, any kind of distraction, and yet his mind always came back to the sensation, as though magnetized.

He feared he would be overcome by the time Legolas released his hands, and yet it was to grow even worse.  For Legolas met his gaze, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, and said, “Where would you like me to treat next?”

Gimli stared at him, stunned.  He offered his back, wordless, but even as Legolas accepted and bent to apply the remedy to one shoulder, he began to tally the bites upon his body and quailed helplessly at the thought of directing the elf to tend them all.  There were bites on his arse, his legs-- on his head, under his beard, on his…

Gimli whimpered without meaning to at the thought of the elf quietly, meticulously seeking out and tending to every last one of the bites.  He would die long before that happened; at some point the easing of his pain was guaranteed to enable other embarrassing responses to occur, and the elf would become aware of Gimli’s unseemly feelings.

“Did I hurt you?”  Legolas’s voice was breathy-- had it always been so low?-- “I am doing my best not to.”

“No, you didn’t,” Gimli said, and damn it, _his_ voice very nearly squeaked.  The reality of Legolas behind him, bending in so close, as if to kiss-- it did terrible things to Gimli’s composure, and to his ability to breathe.  Worse still, Legolas’s hand stole around Gimli’s ribs and lay flat upon his chest, steadying him. He would feel Gimli’s heart race-- see his nipple tighten and lift-- see him flush bright red in embarrassment and shame.  

But Legolas seemed to see nothing, so occupied was he in seeking out each welt and giving it due consideration, unhurried and thorough.  Gimli might almost wish there were an infinite number of bites in areas where he need not be devastated by his embarrassment when the elf touched them.  

And touch he did-- his hand venturing over Gimli slowly as Legolas adjusted them both to allow him to reach every bite on Gimli’s back-- and then wandered around, very naturally finding those on Gimli’s chest.  His fingertips parted the mat of thick hair there, baring the welts to his tongue, and Gimli squeezed his eyes shut in desperation, no longer able to risk meeting the elf’s gaze.

“They have begun to blister,” Legolas said without raising his mouth far enough away; the words brushed his lips against Gimli’s chest.  “I am sorry, Gimli. It will take longer now.”

Longer?  Gimli clamped his teeth in his lip to prevent another whimper from escaping.  Longer even than it would already have been? “You have no need to apologize,” was all he gritted out.  “I got myself into this situation. If you become tired, or wish to stop--” And did he wish that Legolas would stop, or that he would not?

“I would hardly stop now,” protested Legolas, raising his head now in indignation.  “I should be a poor friend indeed if I allowed a bit of tiredness on my part to take precedence over the easing of your pain.”  Gimli could see his eyes burning when he opened his own a crack, but he dared not look down to make complete eye contact. Dared not even open his mouth to respond-- and after a moment of quiet, Legolas lowered his head again to set his lips to another welt on Gimli’s chest.

The blood was racing to Gimli’s lower belly, now, hot in his body, as though every fresh wave of relief enabled it to flow more freely.  Legolas was poised halfway over him, his mouth on Gimli’s chest. He had braced one arm on the ground to hold himself up, and Gimli’s eyes would not stay away from the heavy cords of muscle that stood out along his forearm and below his shoulder; the other hand steadied Gimli’s waist, callused fingers sending further jolts of heat over Gimli’s hip.  Some of his hair had spilled forward over his shoulders, unmarked; the ends trailed down Gimli’s chest and belly, moving forward or back with the motion of Legolas’s head, brushing softly against Gimli’s skin.

If asked, he would claim that it was merely worsening the itch-- but the hair seemed to alert all the nerves in his body to the fact that there was another sensation they ought to focus on, another reason to burn.  Gimli tensed all his muscles in an effort to hold it back: his thighs first, then his calves and lower legs, his toes curling into the damp mossy ground below him as though to hold on. His arms went rigid where they were braced against the ground-- and he wondered if they were close enough to Legolas’s that he would feel all the hair standing up.

The elf was too close!  Legolas would feel every motion that Gimli made; he would feel it, and he would ask-- but Gimli had no other choice, not when Legolas finished with the last bite on his chest and moved his mouth onto Gimli’s belly.  He tensed beneath Legolas’s ministrations, all the muscles in his body now in a desperate war with the heat in his blood-- a war that he knew he would lose, given time.

And time was not on his side.

“Legolas,” he said, and the word came out as a plea.  

The elf raised his head, a small smile curving his lips.  “Yes, my friend?”

Their gazes caught and held for a moment-- and Gimli thought he saw a simmer in Legolas’s expression.  Suddenly he was exquisitely aware of the way the elf’s hands moved, his fingers making small circles on Gimli’s skin.  

“You are enjoying this,” he rumbled suddenly, and to his great relief the elf did not deny it.  Legolas’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, and he met Gimli’s gaze in somber stillness.

“Yes,” he said.  “I am sorry if you would not have it so.”

Gimli wet his lips with his tongue; the trembling was back again--- and it was not all his own.  Legolas’s hand also shook, very subtly, and he saw the hollow of Legolas’s throat pulse quickly with the race of his blood.

“What did you sing to the ants?”  The words tumbled from Gimli’s mouth, unexpected.

Legolas seemed to take some understanding from his words; his smile deepened.  “I thanked them, of course.”  Mischief danced in his eyes.

Gimli’s eyes widened with outrage.  “You asked them to--”

“No, you did not have to kick their nest; that was innocent, if poorly done, and their defense was in earnest once provoked.  But I was glad that you did it.” Legolas stroked his thumbs over Gimli’s hipbones. “As I am glad that Aragorn listened to my request to make us his ambassadors to Harad.”

“How long have you plotted this?”  Gimli asked, suddenly breathless with joyful relief.  “How long?”

“As long as you have watched me, thinking yourself sly and secret, when I bathed.”

“Ah.  You began, then, in Hollin?”

Legolas threw back his head and laughed with delight.  “Perhaps not quite so long, but nearly, my friend.” He shifted, throwing his thigh across Gimli’s and kneeling over his legs.  “And now I have business to attend, most surely, so that you at last may be comfortable enough to fulfill the purpose of all my scheming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested in an extensive outtake from this chapter, click [here](https://urbanspaceman.tumblr.com/post/175722124503/teaser-for-a-new-story-in-progress) to find us enjoying ourselves immensely.
> 
> Tomorrow, we'll wrap this story up with the chapter TAFKAB lovingly named "MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME: DEATH ELF VERSION." We hope you enjoy!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it-- the last rescue, at least in this story. This takes place on the way back from the diplomatic mission to Harad, while skipping said mission entirely (because frankly, the two of us have had absolutely enough of politics in the other story and we've sworn them off for any of our other writing projects). This is probably the most dramatic of our chapters, and contains some graphic violence, so be warned for that.

Despite the hot sun of Harad beating down upon the crown of his head, Legolas found himself in a blithe mood as he and Gimli strolled along a winding wadi carved between tall, forbidding sandstone cliffs, their edges honed to knives by the torrents of the rainy season.  The sky was pure, dark blue behind the looming cliffs of pale yellow striated with orange, not a wisp of cloud in sight, and Gimli was singing in a gruff, resonant bass that rumbled pleasantly throughout the echoing stone walls of the dry watercourse.

“You might have warned me dwarves were a noisy folk,” Legolas said, earning a cordial scowl from his companion.

“And you might have warned me before you put your hand precisely _there_ ,” Gimli scowled.  “It was hardly prudent, elf.”

“Nor was your choice of venue.”  Legolas could not keep back his smile at the gentle teasing, or the rush of warmth to his belly at the memory of that night.  How could he be anything but joyful now, when Gimli walked so close at his side, when all his dreams had come true at last?

“It was a curtained alcove, a place of privacy.”  Even Gimli’s glower was a treasure-- especially the way it wavered, the way Legolas could see that the heart hiding beneath matched his own.  “How should I know it housed the caliph’s throne?”  

“Perhaps you were not to know that, but you could hardly fail to be aware of all the people who were standing nearby-- only a whisper’s distance away.”  Legolas grinned down at Gimli, watching every minute expression on his love’s face as laughter fought to take it over, knowing that any moment it would win.

“What does it matter now?”  Gimli beamed at him at last, his smile breaking through the scowl like sunshine after swift rain.  “We have the treaty Aragorn wanted. That is all we came for.”

“It is true,” Legolas admitted.  “And I will be glad to rejoin the king’s party tomorrow.  Our provisions run low.” Secretly, he would be a bit sorry to end the days of traveling with only Gimli, both because they would lose the privacy to which they had so quickly become accustomed and because there was no one else with whom Legolas felt he could so freely be exactly himself.  He might look forward to one or two nights at most, spent pleasantly here cuddling with Gimli by their fireside for warmth and gazing up through the narrow fluted walls of the canyon to see the stars twinkling above, before they rejoined the men.  But their supplies were dwindling, and while he could survive on little food and water, he knew that Gimli would suffer, though he would run himself into the ground before admitting it.

“I have been without pipeweed for nearly two days,” Gimli scowled.  “Do not remind me.”

Before admitting to some kinds of suffering, anyway.  Legolas could not help a slight laugh. “I am more concerned for our stores of bread and cheese!”  He patted the pouch at his hip.  “And for the mead.”

“With you rationing a swallow apiece at mealtimes, it will last longer than the two of us under this sun!”  Gimli squinted up, abruptly stopping Legolas with an extended hand and watching a few small pebbles rattle down the canyon walls toward them.  “Hst,” he said. “I mislike the looks of that--”

Something struck Legolas then, and he knew no more.

*****

Legolas blinked his eyes open and knew immediately that something was wrong.

It was nearly morning, he thought, some short time before dawn, and he could not remember what he had dreamed.  Nor did he recall settling in for reverie, or being so tired that he would have done so with his eyes closed.  In fact, he could not remember anything since--

He sat upright, and the throbbing pain at the back of his head filled in all the rest of the gaps in his memory-- or rather, all else that he needed to know.

They had been attacked!  The last thing he remembered was Gimli telling him that he did not like the looks of something, and then-- someone must have come from behind him, while he was distracted by Gimli and knocked him unconscious!  And yet as he gazed around to recover his bearings, he noticed that he had not been moved, or taken prisoner. So they must have wanted to rob him-- but he carried nothing valuable on his person, nothing that he would miss, except--

“Gimli?” he called, ignoring the throbbing in his skull, sweeping his gaze frantically around him.  All was dry and bare, all the more deserted for his sudden solitude; the wind swept dust over the ground before being blocked in its course by the cliffs, and there was no other noise but the echo of his own voice, no other figure to be seen, standing or lying.

Gimli was gone.

Legolas’s heart pounded, but he forced himself to calm: perhaps Gimli had merely woken before he had, and had found a sign of the people who had attacked them, or perhaps he had not been knocked unconscious and had fought them off, and even now ran in pursuit--

No.  Gimli would not have left him alone, not if he had any other choice in the matter.

Legolas pressed his fist to his mouth to stifle the frantic sobbing gasp that wished to escape in a burst of sound, forcing himself to quiet and listen.  Why they would have left him, he did not know, unless they thought him dead… but then, if they thought Gimli dead as well, they would not have taken him away.  So wherever he was, he must be alive. Alive, and either escaped-- or captured.

Legolas went absolutely still, so as not to cause even the tiniest scuffle.  He held his breath-- tried, even, to quiet the beating of his heart, tilted his head, and _listened_.

Nothing at first, for long moments.  But perhaps Gimli had managed to fight his way free, and now sought to be as quiet as Legolas was, so as not to be found?  He must reveal that he was looking, so Gimli might know where he was. The thought that he might himself be captured flickered into his mind, and then was summarily dismissed.  That mattered not at all.

“Gimli!” he called again, and once more went perfectly silent, ears straining with all their might for the tiniest indication of life.  But all he heard was the echo of his own voice against the cliffside.

He did not dare call out again.  He waited for long moments, hoping, praying for some kind of response, even if his ability to listen was increasingly disturbed by his rapidly speeding heart.

And then, off in the distance, so faint he could barely make it out, he heard a scream.

Legolas sprang to his feet in haste, but the twists and turns of the canyon cliffs were so tangled he could not make out where the sound had come from; every direction he turned, the echoes seemed to batter at his ears, coming from before his face.  He could not even tell if it was Gimli making the sound, or some other unfortunate soul in agony.

He cast about in desperation, but the wind had erased any tracks, spreading sand and dust evenly over the ground and leaving him with nothing to follow.  The raiders might have taken Gimli in either direction along the watercourse-- or even dragged him out of the wadi and up the cliffs.

Why Gimli had been taken and Legolas himself left behind, he could not say.  He had nothing by way of ransom, and it did not appear that the attackers had been interrupted before they could drag both of their victims away.  Possibly it was a gesture meant to antagonize Gondor, and Legolas had been left to carry the tale of the lost ambassador back to the king.

Whatever it was, Legolas had never felt so small and alone as he did standing there beneath the unfamiliar brassy blue of the southeastern sky.

“I will have you back, _meleth_ ,” he said, a vow so deep it settled in his very bones.  “And those who have taken you will pay.”

He swept his cloak around himself and sprang forward, no longer hampered in his speed by a desire to keep pace with a dwarf’s short legs.  He would scour every nook and cranny of this foul land until he located Gimli’s captors and dispatched them to the Halls of Mandos.

Never before had Legolas run with such a single-minded concentration on his goal-- and never before had his goal been so unknown to him.  He could only hope that Aragorn would come to him here soon enough-- but him Legolas could locate with ease, for he would not be hiding. In the meantime, he would search.

Where could they have taken Gimli?  The land was unknown to Legolas; he was quick enough at orienting himself when he arrived somewhere new, but that was no comparison to those who had lived here all their lives.  And who else could this be? Orcs did not take prisoners, not unless they had something they wanted-- and there were few enough of them in this land anyway. No, these could only be men, and they could only be men who knew the desert.

It mattered not.  Legolas would run for days if he had to; he would search every inch of this land.  He swept his eyes up and down over the terrain before him and kept his breathing as quiet as possible, even with the strain of running at his full speed, and his ears constantly on the alert for any noise.  They might know this land, but Legolas would not rest until he had found them-- until he had found Gimli.

He heard the scream again, a sound of pure agony that ripped through the still air and straight into him, tearing away the skin of his chest to leave his heart raw and exposed.  It was distorted enough that he could not tell if it was Gimli, but he could not be certain that it was not, and that-- for Gimli to make such a sound, he would have to be enduring torment the likes of which Legolas could hardly imagine.

It sounded again and this time it drove him to his knees, the breath pressed out of his lungs, tears springing to his eyes.  Never had he wished so badly to place his own body before another as a shield; he wished that the pain were being inflicted on him instead, not merely on his heart, but on his body, placed before Gimli’s to protect him-- but it was not, it would not, not until he found him.

Legolas braced himself, and this time when he heard the scream, he forced himself to focus: digging his fingernails into his palms, he concentrated on the sting of pain to distract himself from the anguish in his heart, and he made himself listen.  From where was it coming? Where could he go to find it?

The echoes still broke the sound into fragments, but Legolas thought that it had grown louder than before.  Was he drawing nearer, or was someone toying with him? He came to a stop beside a twisted-looking cliff, shielding himself from the wind, and listened again.

He tried to sink into the sound, even as it wrenched at his ears; tried to trace the paths of the echoes and the fragments to follow it back to where it began.  Were Gimli here, doubtless he could have helped-- he knew stone, the sorts of patterns it could create in sound, the ways it might distort and hide truth-- but Gimli was not here, and if Legolas could not manage this on his own he never would be again.

Despair welled up in his chest and threatened to choke him, until he felt he must release it in some sound.  A wail of his own took shape in his throat; he knew he had only to open his mouth to let it out-- but he stopped himself suddenly.  No. No, he would not let them know what they had done to him. And if Gimli could hear him, he deserved something different. Something that spoke not of despair, but of freedom-- and of promise.

He took a breath, forcing his lungs and his voice to steady, and began to sing.

His voice began small and uncertain, full of the pain of his worry, but soon swelled to fill the ravine around him-- and the sound of himself singing slowly helped Legolas begin to sort out the terrain within his own mind.  Not all of the flutings in the canyon were shallow; some revealed watercourses of their own, and others… others led back into the hills, where water had carved far down into the earth, making grooves or slots. Some might be broad enough to allow a man to pass, and others would not.  Some were trackless, with no view of the sky, while others allowed sunlight to filter down into their depths, catching in a haze of dust and causing it to glow suspended in midair.  

In those places, the echoes were deeper, more layered.  Legolas paused to thank Gimli in his heart; the dwarf had spoken in Aglarond of how one might use such things to keep from being lost in a cave, or to find the way out, and Legolas had little thought then what a blessing such knowledge might become later on.

He thought he could get his bearings and find the location of the cries if only he could pass the gully from whence they came-- but then other sounds intruded, much closer by, and he retreated from the slot canyon he had been investigating to find sentries of Minas Tirith gathered at the edge of the cliff, gazing down.

“It is the elvish ambassador,” one said.  “Tell the king!”

“And bring what men and arms may be had,” Legolas cried.  “The king’s friend, the dwarf Gimli, is taken, I know not where!”

The scouts exchanged dismayed glances.  “Let us find a way down,” one called. “And we will join your search.”

*****

The men of Minas Tirith made their agonizingly slow descent with the aid of ropes and weights after dispatching a sentry to fetch more.  All the while, the cries continued, so distorted by the echoing canyons Legolas could only guess at what might provoke them from his stalwart and brave friend.  He had never been so frustrated with the limitations of men until that moment; if this were a troupe of elves they would have scaled down the wall in an instant and would already be spreading throughout the canyon network, much closer to eventually finding Gimli.

The moment the first man’s toes touched the sand Legolas was away.  “Search the canyon in pairs,” he called over his shoulders. “Look for traces from those who attacked us and carried Gimli away.  Report any findings here. Do not forget to seek prints and do not spoil any you find!”

“Y-yes sir,” an astonished guard stammered, but Legolas was already vanished down another turning.  

These canyon cliffs were like a maze-- from more of a distance they had appeared as a single forbidding wall, but now Legolas could tell that there were twists and turns and crevices between and among them, rock formed into different shapes over long years of water and wind and, years before, of ice.  Gimli had told him all this-- Gimli would love it here, would have gladly explored for hours or days until Legolas finally pulled him away with a reminder of their meeting.  Had he been able to see it, when they had dragged him here? Had he been conscious, watching the canyon walls in fascination, not knowing what horrors awaited him when he reached his destination, wherever it was?  Had he been given a chance to appreciate the wonders of the stone here?

It mattered not, for at this moment, Legolas hated them.  He had known that one day death would take Gimli from him… but he had not thought it would be this day, or any day soon.  He gritted his teeth at those fools who thought they would hasten his loss. By the Valar, they deserved no mercy!

He hated them all the more with every second that passed, all too swiftly, with every minute and then hour of time wasted searching fruitlessly among these accursed cliffs.  He hated the stone labyrinth; he hated the steady flow of time, trickling by like the grains of sand blown in the desert winds; he hated every time he begrudgingly returned to the meeting point only to see the men of Minas Tirith shake their heads once more.  _No sign of him_.

He thought he could hate nothing more than the hoarse cries that continually echoed through the canyon walls, rending his ears and his heart alike-- but as it happened, he hated even more when they stopped.

At first he hardly noticed it; the cries were not consistent, echoing out sometimes in clusters of drawn-out agony and other times with long pauses between-- but as the pause extended and extended, and Legolas realized there was nothing more to be heard, he felt his heart go cold.

It would not have been because they had suddenly ceased to mistreat Gimli.  If he was no longer screaming, it was because he could not.

Legolas’s breathing stopped for a moment, and then tore at his throat in a harsh inhale of panic and horror; it became something wild in his chest, something clawing at his insides and tearing its way free in a strangled cry of his own-- a wild scream of fear and anger and frustration and desperation--

The men around him were staring at him, he thought dimly, but he could hardly notice it.  He forced himself to quiet, though, listening to the echoes of his own voice-- surely he had explored many of the winding pathways and crevices by now, surely there could be little left that he had not found, surely he was getting closer-- _surely he was getting closer!_

His breath hissed now through clenched teeth, fast and tight; his hands curled again into fists at his sides, and this time he could feel his nails tearing at his flesh.  He could not care.

“My-- my lord?” ventured one of the men near him.  “Are you--?”

“No more delays,” he snapped-- he could not bear the sound of the man’s voice, innocently concerned-- concerned for _him_ , as though there were no other, truer reasons for fear!  “Keep looking. We will find him, if I have to tear this canyon apart stone by stone with my own hands.”

More men arrived then, and would have begun the laborious climb down into the canyon, but Legolas stopped them.  Perhaps the raiders had left its confines, trusting that they would leave Legolas baffled. They could be anywhere, and time was stretching.

“Search the countryside where you are,” he called up.  And if you see anything that looks promising, give a horn-call.  I will answer.”

Aragorn appeared then, his expression grave, torn between amusement and concern-- the amusement rapidly fading.  “What has happened?” He asked.

Legolas ignored the ropes of the men, swarming up a roughened space of wall as if he were a spider.  “Gimli and I returned from successful parley, and he chose to show me the ways of the canyons. But we were stalked and I was struck.  He was taken ere I woke, and now we seek him.” He was vaguely conscious of his own impropriety in commanding the king’s men, but he would not acknowledge if if Aragorn gave no reproach; the emergency was pressing enough to justify his liberty.

“Do you think you were pursued?”

“I think men lay in ambush,” Legolas said.  “Neither of us heard any sign of pursuit. I would have seen them if they followed.  No, they lay in wait.”

“Perhaps then these are raiders, and not the agents of the caliph.”  Aragorn frowned.

“They tortured him,” Legolas said, low.  “Did you not hear the screams? What do they want with him, Aragorn?  I still have my purse. It is not gold they seek.”

“They wanted us to hear him suffer,” Aragorn sighed.  “It is my guess that they do not approve of our business with the caliph, or our presence on their lands, or some other quibble.  They wish to frighten us, to threaten. Perhaps to warn.”

“They will die,” Legolas said.  “Any and all who laid a finger on him will know an elf’s wrath.”

“You are not yourself, Legolas,” Aragorn frowned.  “I have never heard you speak thus of dealing death to men.”

Legolas turned away; time was wasting while they argued.  “There is no time to spare. We must find him while there is yet hope that he lives.”  He did not say that that hope was dwindling even as they spoke.

He lifted his eyes to scan the countryside, scowling out over the flat rocky land and the scrubby bushes dotting it at intervals; it was no place for an elf or a dwarf, the treacherous sandstone prone to collapse when undermined by water, with few plants and fewer animals.  

“The canyon begins there,” Aragorn pointed to a distant outcrop of stony ridges, which even Legolas had difficulty seeing in the distance.  “Water funnels down from less arid lands beyond and is channeled to a point by mountains. Where it enters the region of sandstone, it cuts this channel.”

If the bandits had lain in wait, they might have come from that direction.  Legolas nodded sharply and began to run alongside the canyon, leaping side branches and tributaries, seeking some sign-- the print of a foot or a beast of burden, a scrap of frayed clothing caught on a stone--

A whiff of smoke, borne on the air.  He stopped, then backed up in his own tracks, seeking the trace again.  There it was…. So thin as to be invisible, but smoke meant habitation, and that must be the raiders.

Slowly he circled, ignoring the men following at a distance.  Strongest… there. Where a small crack lay in the ground, so narrow he had hardly marked it as he sprang over.

Moving stealthily now, his palm outstretched to halt the noisy clamor of the men, he prowled along the edge of the crack, the smoke still in his nostrils, growing stronger.  It was a chimney crack, not a proper entrance to the canyon at all, but…. There. He flung himself noiselessly to the ground and peered down. Flames burned below, eclipsed now and again by the motion of hands.  Someone prepared food within.

“Have you found something?”  Nearly as soundless as an elf, Aragorn approached and knelt by him, laying a steadying hand on his shoulder.

Legolas glared and put a finger to his lips.  Perhaps it was unreasonable-- Aragorn was quiet enough that likely no man would be able to hear him, but the thought of alerting his quarry to his presence by any noise or disturbed pebble before he could be sure that they were within his grasp…. He rose silently and minced backwards on light feet, looking carefully at the ground to be certain he made not a single sound until he was some distance back.

“There are men down there,” he breathed, waving at the chimney crack he had found.  “They must have some hiding place within the canyon walls, hidden from the outside, but their smoke rises through here.”  Smoke. Fire. He had thought they had been cooking food, but… a sudden horrible image rose up in his mind, of what other uses fire might have, and his teeth snapped together audibly; he could not stop it.

“Legolas,” Aragorn said in a warning voice, but Legolas spun away from him and surveyed the clifftop.  The crack ran to the edge, though it grew thinner at the top, and down the side… there must be an entrance below.  Those who used it must have a way to go in and out, and if they could use it, so could he.

Without another word to Aragorn, or to the men around them, he wrapped his hands around the edge of the cliff and lowered himself down.

It was a difficult climb-- the edge at the top quickly thinned into a ledge, and Legolas felt the muscles in his arms straining as he groped for a foothold.  And when he found one, it was a great distance away and he had to reach for the next handhold, so that for a time he was supporting himself only with one arm and one leg.  Though he freed himself soon enough from the ledge, the rest of the climb was similar-- with lumps and cracks some distance apart-- and soon enough he felt his arms and legs begin to burn.

He leaned into the pain-- it was a more welcome sensation than the burning in his mind, the empty place in his heart where Gimli had been torn away, the fear that gnawed at his raw edges.  He focused on the climb instead, and on the slender crack that still ran down the side of the cliff-- and that widened, as he drew nearer to the bottom.

He stayed back from it-- if they were close, he did not want them to hear him while he clung defenseless to the side of a cliff.  There, he would be an easy target for any archers-- and he did not doubt, knowing these men’s lack of honor, that they would pick him off where he climbed.  And then who would be there to save Gimli? He did not trust these men of Minas Tirith-- he did not doubt their loyalty, but rather, he did not trust them to do what needed to be done without hesitation, did not trust them to put Gimli’s safety first in their minds.

Closer to the ground, the holds were growing thicker; he picked up speed, and soon enough clambered down the last few feet to the ground, where he stood for a moment to regain his bearings.

He was deeper into the canyon than he had yet been, in what felt almost like a forest of looming, twisted pillars of stone-- or would have, had these pillars not been larger and more ominous than any tree.  They seemed to bend toward one another above him, leaving only tiny slots of sky peeking through-- these must have been some of the cracks above, he realized, that he had simply leaped over in his search.

He kept an eye to the wall he had climbed down, which had itself seemed to morph into one of these twisted pillars.  He had not noticed it as he climbed, but now…

Anyway, he could still see the crack he had followed, which wound its way around the edge, widening as it went.

His entrance, then, would be somewhere near here-- he had only to follow it.  But he stopped himself before rushing forward, though every muscle in his body was tensed to spring into action.  He kept a hand on the wall, loving it and hating it at the same time-- it was his way to Gimli, even as it kept the dwarf hidden from him-- closed his eyes, and _listened_.

There.  Voices-- coming almost from within the stone he leaned against.

They spoke in a language he did not know, but he could recognize their tone.  Harsh, mocking-- amusement with an edge of cruelty more jagged than the edges of their cliffs.  Conversation rising and falling, as though they were moving about a room-- as though they were moving closer to and then away from something.

These, no doubt, were the people he was searching for: the people who had Gimli.

Legolas’s breath huffed out his nose in a rush of pure fury; his hand against the wall contracted, his fingers scraping down the rough stone.

He tilted his head back to look up.  He had not climbed down in a straight line, and he had to contort his head to the side to see where he had left-- there, he could make out the sight of Aragorn’s men running to and fro on the edge of the cliff, preparing ropes to climb down.

Another laugh rang out within the stone, louder than the last, more sadistic, and Legolas’s head snapped towards the noise.

Perhaps they would arrive in time to aid him; perhaps not.  It mattered not-- he had no more time to waste.

His white knives appeared in his hands as if conjured.  He edged toward the corner cautiously, bending just far enough to peer around.

A group of perhaps twenty men assembled there, raggedly dressed after the fashion of desert nomads, their torn and tattered raiment enough evidence for Legolas that these were renegade tribesmen, not men of the capital, where he and Gimli had negotiated.  They could conceivably be in the pay of the caliph, but he would disavow them and deny knowledge of their actions, Legolas thought, if Aragorn complained.

Piles of supplies were stacked all around, evidence of the raiders’ activities: bundles of carpeting, tubs of lamp oil, barrels of pipeweed and wine, various foodstuffs… a tidy little cache.  Despite their ragged clothing, these men were not without wealth and comfort.

As he took the measure of his opponents, Legolas finally caught sight of the small bundle that lay tumbled in the opposite end of the room, and it was as if a red madness washed before his eyes.

He erupted from hiding with a scream, knives flashing, and took the throats of the three nearest men before they even knew he was among them.  Blood spattered, but he ignored it, carving a swath through the raiders with knives, fists, even feet, striking and slashing, using his entire body as a weapon.

They went down like scarecrows, tattered rags fluttering; a few thought to bring weapons to bear, but they were too slow for him, and he left them bloodied heaps in his wake.  Others shrank against the walls; he bared his teeth at them, knives busy with bolder assailants. He would have torn out their throats with his teeth, if he must-- but the knives were longer fangs, and they sufficed.

Several fled deeper into the cavern, hiding themselves amidst the piles of loot and provender; Legolas let them go.  He strode to the corner where Gimli lay-- the welts of terrible burns exposed all along one arm, and blood at the corner of his lips.  

“I have come, _meleth_ ,” Legolas told him softly, and lifted the dwarf easily in one arm, taking special care not to jostle his head and neck-- he seemed whole, other than for the burns, but there might be other injuries that Legolas could not identify.  He must have fought like a cornered bear when they struck Legolas down, but there had been too many of them, and they had held the advantage of surprise.

No longer.

“Amral-” Gimli sighed between slack lips.

“Rest easy, and I will take you to help,” Legolas murmured.  He straightened, Gimli cradled against his body, held steady in the curve of one arm, and scowled at the room.  He wanted none of these things.

He lashed out with his free hand and sent a lamp toppling; it fell and its oil soaked into a heap of rugs, which ignited with a low thump.

Let the raiders choke in their caves, or burn as they tried to flee them.  He cared not.

Carrying Gimli as gently as if he were a newborn, Legolas strode from the cave, only steps ahead of the flames that dove eagerly into the high-stacked goods behind him.  

*****

Aragorn could understand the burning impatience that seemed to have consumed Legolas; he felt it now, as he waited for ropes to be prepared and tied off, so that they might descend after Legolas before the elf did something rash.

From the look in his eyes before he had descended the cliff, that moment was not far off, and Aragorn found his fingers flexing as he waited, resenting every second of delay.

“Here, my king,” said one of his men.  “We have prepared the ropes-- but perhaps one of us ought to descend first, just to be sure that all will hold--”

Aragorn did not even respond.  He simply made his way to where the rope had been made fast to a curve of protruding rock, worn through in the middle until it took the shape of a tree root.  He tugged on the knot, satisfied himself that it would hold, and then took hold of the rope and began to lower himself down.

“Follow me,” he called up at the others, but he could tell that now was no time to delay.  He did not know how many men there were, and Legolas did not either, but he had no doubt that the elf, given the state he was in, would have thrown himself into battle alone against an entire army.

And indeed, he was nearly halfway down the rope when he heard the screaming.

He tried frantically to gauge the number of voices, using only half his concentration for his descent and the other half to strain his ears.  That first yell-- he might have thought it was Legolas, only it had had a wild edge to it, a sort of animal sound that he had never heard from the throat of an elf--

But the other screams were familiar: shock, terror, confusion-- and their voices were undoubtedly men.  That first cry-- that had been Legolas.

He climbed faster.

Something else seemed off, striking him as his feet touched the ground-- a scent.  He had barely scented the smoke that Legolas had noticed earlier, but now he had no problem noticing it.  It was stronger: thick, acrid, stinging his nose and throat. And now he could see it, as well.

Leaving the rope, only dimly hearing the sounds of his men descending behind him, he dashed toward the source of the smoke and the noise, and then stopped in his tracks.

A figure emerged from the mouth of a cavern some ways ahead of him, smoke curling out and around from behind him, thick and black, sullen red light behind the billows.  In the midst of it was Legolas: disheveled and wild-eyed, his tangled blond hair lifting on the hot wind of the fire, which licked at his heels as he strode forward-- as steady and inexorable as the coming of the dawn or of the tide.  Blood smeared his face and his clothing, matted his hair, and dripped from the blades of his knives, held in one red-stained hand.

In the other arm he held Gimli.  

The cavern shook as something exploded behind the elf-- first one explosion, then another and another, flames gouting up through the billows of smoke and licking through the encroaching cliffs as if soot had kindled and burned within a chimney.  The ground shuddered and rocks fell from the cliff walls that surrounded them, but Legolas remained unmoved, striding forward at the same purposeful pace. A fiery shower of sparks snapped and bit at the elf, sending wisps of smoke up from his leather, but he ignored them-- except that he brushed one off Gimli’s beard, very tenderly.

Aragorn could not restrain a gasp at the sight of the dwarf, limp and lolling, seeming small as he rarely did in wakefulness, but held so gently in the cradle of Legolas’s powerful arm.

Legolas’s head snapped to the side at the sound of Aragorn’s intake of breath, and he made as if to surge forward, but then restrained himself, his arm carefully steadying Gimli’s limp form so he would not be jostled.  “Help him,” he said hoarsely to Aragorn. “Have you your healing things with you?”

“Legolas…” Aragorn paused for a moment.  He had never seen his friend so distressed, so single-minded-- he had known Gimli was dear to him, certainly, but this?  “The raiders?” was all he said, instead of asking Legolas all that he wished to.

“Dead.”  Legolas’s voice was flat and emotionless.

Aragorn stared at him.  “All of them?”

“Those who are not will be soon enough.”  The ground shook again with another explosion and a brief flurry of screaming, illustrating his words.  Still, his face revealed no emotion but a twist of the lip that spoke of pure hatred-- until he looked back down at Gimli, and then his expression was a raw mass of fear and desperation and a strange, almost out-of-place sort of tenderness.  “We must take him somewhere you can tend him.”

“Will you cut my throat if I touch him?”  Aragorn asked, truly uncertain, and something wild and terrible in Legolas seemed to shake itself awake-- or rather, to depart, subsiding back into the depths from where it had come.  

“I will not, of course,” Legolas said, his voice hoarse-- perhaps from the smoke, or from the cries he had uttered in his rage.  “Let us go from this place. The walls are not stable.”

“Let us go,” Aragorn commanded his men, who fled at his word, hastening away from the burning lair-- and from the blood-soaked, smoke-blackened specter of the elf, who looked as if some tormented prisoner had climbed from the hell of Thangorodrim many long centuries ago.

Legolas led Aragorn forth-- the shivering of the ground beneath their feet a herald of more; rocks rolled, then rumbled, as the passage behind collapsed around the burning hoard.  Legolas led him calmly but swiftly, unerring in his choice of passages, choosing the fastest way from the lair. Even now whumps of fire billowed out from the new collapse as items within kindled, sending puffs of hot air to scorch their heels.

At last they emerged into a wider part of the wadi, and Legolas laid Gimli upon the sand, composing him tenderly, taking special care with his burned arms.

The dwarf’s eyes blinked, he gazed up blearily.  “Your hair is mussed, _kidhuzurâl_.”  His voice was hoarse, raw from screaming, but his tone was fond.

Aragorn blinked as the world flung itself upward in tiny fragments and then assembled once more before him-- in an entirely new pattern, long hinted but never confirmed until this moment.  At any other moment, he might have smiled, or teased them, but even amidst the terror of this day, his heart felt light.

“Is it, _meleth nin_?”  Legolas answered softly-- as unlike the apparition he had seemed before as the night was unlike the day.  “Then you will have to mend it, when you are well again.”

“Aye,” Gimli said, and winced.  His lashes slid shut once more.

“Heal him, Aragorn,” Legolas said, and straightened, taking up a watch-- standing between the two of them and all others.  The fury was gone but now Aragorn could see it, leashed and quiet, biding its time. It remained within him, visible since it had been but so recently wakened.  As soon as the dwarf recovered, he thought it might lapse entirely, waiting again to be roused at need.

He hoped it would not return-- for the sake of any who might be fool enough to rouse it.

Aragorn gestured to his men to remain well back and approached with caution, medicine bag in hand, to assess the condition of Gimli’s injuries.

****

The evenings and nights were cool here, a stark contrast to the heat and brightness of the day, but the stars were especially bright with no city lights to hinder them.  Legolas sat in the same position he had held all through the afternoon and evening as the men bustled around preparing a camp and meals. They had all stayed well clear of him, he noted dully, but he could only muster up the energy to be glad of his solitude.

Almost solitude.

He glanced down once more at Gimli’s sleeping face, slack and peaceful, though occasionally a spasm of pain would flutter across it, his brow wrinkling and lips tightening for a moment before relaxing again.  It was calm now, and Legolas brushed two fingers gently over his forehead, straightening a wisp of hair that the evening wind had stirred.

Gimli winced; a tiny moan escaped him, and Legolas froze, hoping that he had not disturbed a much-needed slumber, hoping that soon the spasm would pass and Gimli’s face would relax again.

But his eyes fluttered open instead-- unfocused and bleary, but Legolas could see the recognition in them, and the way his lips turned up into a slight smile.  “You are still here,” he said.

“Of course I am,” murmured Legolas, fighting down the powerful urge to lay his head on Gimli’s chest and dissolve into a fit of undignified sobbing.  As it was, he swallowed hard at the lump in his throat, forced his quivering lips into a smile of his own. “You thought I would leave you?”

“No, I knew you would stay.”  Gimli’s fingers twitched as though seeking, and Legolas wrapped them in his own to still them.  “Knew you would come for me.” He made a throaty sound that was almost a chuckle, and then winced again.  “Always rescuing me.”

Legolas blinked hard.  “You rescued me first, _meleth_ , when I had no reason to deserve it,” he said, squeezing Gimli’s fingers.  “Never forget that. And I will spend all my life making it up to you.”

“Don’t have to.”  Now Gimli smiled again.  “Not keeping score.”

“No, not in this,” Legolas agreed, and he bent down to brush his lips over Gimli’s forehead.  “Never in this.” He let his kiss linger as he made a pledge within his mind.  _I will always save him_ , he vowed. _None will take him from me, lest it be Mandos himself._

Gimli sighed, relaxing, his eyes sliding shut-- a perfect trust that sheared through Legolas as keenly as the blade of a knife, moving him with a tenderness so great it nearly crippled him.  He had erred in supposing them safe; he had been too lax in his watchfulness, assuming all evils had passed away with the death of Sauron.

No more.

Arranging them both with care so as not to jostle the dwarf’s injuries, he curled up next to Gimli and slid an arm around him.  He stared out at their assembled company, assessing any threat and giving warning that none would harm Gimli without incurring the wrath of an elf.  

Aragorn would guard over them, he knew-- for the moment, they were safe.  But how long might that moment last?

He held Gimli as he slept, a deep healing sleep that would do much to restore him.  Dwarves were strong, for mortals, and resilient-- he would not remain an invalid for long.

For his part, Legolas remained awake and kept watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Thank you all so much for reading, and especially to those of you who have commented. We hope you've enjoyed the story!


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